A book by Spain's greatest living writer weaves fiction and fact into a completely original and unforgettable hybrid. Called by its author a false novel, Dark Back of Time begins with the tale of the odd effects of publishing All Souls, his witty and sardonic 1989 Oxford novel. All Souls is a book Marías swears to be fiction, but which its characters--the real-life dons and professors and bookshop owners who have recognized themselves--fiercely maintain to be a roman à clef. With the sleepy world of Oxford set into fretful motion by a world that never existed, Dark Back of Time begins an odyssey into the nature of identity and of time. Marías weaves together autobiography, a legendary kingdom, strange ghostly literary figures, halls of mirrors, a one-eyed pilot, a curse in Havana, and a bullet lost in Mexico.
