Tu rostro mañana 1: Fiebre y lanza was published by Alfaguara in 2002 (English translation by Margaret Jull Costa, 2005), the first volume of a trilogy that represents Marías’s most ambitious work — a 1,300-page novel that expands the concerns of his earlier books into an espionage narrative of extraordinary intellectual density.
The narrator, Jacques Deza (who appeared previously in All Souls), is a Spaniard living in London who is recruited by Bertram Tupra — a figure of ambiguous authority in British intelligence — because of his unusual ability to interpret people: to look at a face, listen to a voice, observe a gesture, and know what that person is capable of, what they will do under pressure, whether they can be trusted or broken.
This gift — which connects to Marías’s lifelong preoccupation with the opacity of other people — becomes dangerous when placed in the service of an institution that uses such knowledge to manipulate, control, and (possibly) destroy. The novel asks: if you can see what a person will become, are you responsible for what they do? If knowledge is power, is the act of knowing always an act of domination?
The prose is Marías at his most expansive — sentences that extend for pages, paragraphs that spiral through multiple levels of reflection before arriving (or not arriving) at their conclusions. The reading experience is immersive rather than propulsive: one enters the narrator’s consciousness and lives there.
Collecting Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear
First Spanish edition (Alfaguara, Madrid, 2002): Paperback original.
Market values:
- First Spanish edition: $15–$35
- First English edition (Chatto & Windus, 2005): $15–$35
- First US edition (New Directions, 2005): $10–$25
- Complete trilogy set (English): $40–$100