While the Women Are Sleeping

Slippery figures in anomalous situations - ghosts, spies, bodyguards, criminals - haunt these stories by Javier Marias: the characters come bearing their strange and special secrets, and never leave our minds. In one story, a man obsessed with his much younger lover endlessly videotapes her every move, and then confides his surprising plans for her; in another a ghost can’t stop resigning from his job. Masterfully, Marias manages in a small space to perplex and delight. The short story fits Marias like a glove, as Le Point noted. His stories have been hailed as formidably intelligent (The London Review of Books), a bracing tonic (Chicago Tribune), and startling (The New York Times Book Review).