A thrilling new literary offering from the acclaimed author of The Infatuations and A Heart So White

'For a while, she wasn't sure that her husband was her husband. Sometimes she thought he was, and sometimes not...'

Berta Isla and Tomás Nevinson meet in Madrid. They are both very young and quickly decide to spend their lives together - never suspecting that they will grow to be total strangers, both living living under the shadow of disappearances.

Tomás, half-Spanish and half-English, has an extraordinary gift for languages and accents. Leaving Berta to study at Oxford, he catches the interest of a certain government agency, and its mysterious agent, Bertram Tupra. But Tomás resists the call of fate - until one, foolish day he makes an avoidable mistake - setting in motion events that will affect the rest of his life and that of his beloved Berta. Finishing his time at Oxford, he returns to Madrid to marry her, already knowing the life they planned has been lost forever.

Darkly gripping, Berta Isla is a story about a relationship condemned to secrecy and concealment, to pretence and conjecture, to resentment mingled with loyalty. With meticulous insight and understanding of the human soul, Marías examines the urge to change our destiny, and the hopeless exiles we bring upon ourselves.

Javier Marías is the author of sixteen works in Spanish, which have been translated into forty-two languages including English. His translated English works are All Souls, A Heart So White, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, When I Was Mortal, Dark Back of Time, The Man of Feeling, Voyage Along the Horizon, Written Lives, the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy (Fever and Spear, Dance and Dream and Poison, Shadow and Farewell), Bad Nature, While the Women Are Sleeping, The Infatuations, Thus Bad Begins and, Venice, An Interior. Javier Marías has received numerous literary prizes including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Formentor. He lives and works as a translator and columnist in Madrid.