Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico

About the author

“One of the writers who should get the Nobel Prize.”

— Orhan Pamuk

“Sexy, contemplative, elusive, and addictive.”

— San Francisco Bay Guardian

“The most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature.”

— The Boston Sunday Globe

Javier Marías is widely considered Spain’s greatest living writer and has been translated into 38 languages. His nine books with New Directions have been admired as “superb” (Review of Contemporary Fiction), “fantastically original” (Talk), “dazzling” (The Times Literary Supplement, London), and “brilliant” (Virginia Quarterly Review).

Translator of Javier Marías, Jorge Luis Borges, Felisberto Hernández, Flaubert, Rosario Castellanos, Blaise Cendrars, Marie Darrieussecq, and José Marti, Esther Allen is a professor at Baruch College (CUNY), and directs the work of the PEN Translation Fund Award.