Poison, Shadow and Farewell

de Javier Marías

The concluding part to Marias's masterwork: 'This trilogy must be one of the greatest novels of our age' (Antony Beevor)Jacques Deza is back in London and once again working for the mysterious intelligence agency run by Bertram Tupra. Deza finds himself forced to watch Tupra's collection of incriminating videotapes of important public figures. The recordings document unconventional private lives – and horrific acts. The scenes enter him like a poison, contaminating everything good, yet he is powerless to counteract them.Mind and memory polluted, Deza goes home to Madrid on leave to find his father gently slipping towards death, and his wife, Luisa, involved with a new man. Set against a background of brutality, Poison, Shadow and Farewell asks whether violence can ever be justified and completes the extraordinary journey that has led us on a descent into hell and a re-emergence, not entirely unscathed, into life.Javier Marias has been called 'the most significant Spanish writer of his generation' and in a bravura performance he draws together themes not only from earlier volumes in the trilogy but from his entire body of work, to provide a thrilling end to his magnum opus.