{"id":305796,"date":"2017-04-06T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2017\/04\/06\/thus-bad-begins-by-javier-marias-why-this-book-should-win\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T14:30:28","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T14:30:28","slug":"thus-bad-begins-by-javier-marias-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2017\/04\/06\/thus-bad-begins-by-javier-marias-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"“Thus Bad Begins” by Javier Mar\u00edas [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between the announcement of the Best Translated Book Award longlists<\/a> and the unveiling of the finalists, we will be covering all thirty-five titles in the Why This Book Should Win<\/a> series. Enjoy learning about all the various titles selected by the fourteen fiction and poetry judges, and I hope you find a few to purchase and read!<\/em><\/p>\n

The entry below is by Lori Feathers, co-founder of Interabang Books<\/a> in Dallas, TX.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thus Bad Begins<\/em><\/a> by Javier Mar\u00edas, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (Spain, Knopf)<\/b><\/p>\n

Chad\u2019s Uneducated and Unscientific Percentage Chance of Making the Shortlist: 38%<\/b><\/p>\n

Chad\u2019s Uneducated and Unscientific Percentage Chance of Winning the BTBA<\/span>: 6%<\/b><\/p>\n

In this dispiriting era of fake \u201cnews\u201d it feels ironic to praise Javier Mar\u00edas\u2019s Thus Bad Begins<\/em>, a novel centered around the idea that it is better to have been deceived and never know it than to learn that you are the victim of a deception.<\/p>\n

Set in Madrid in 1980, Thus Bad Begins<\/em> is narrated by Juan, twenty-three and the only child of absented diplomats who secure a job for him as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, a respected Spanish filmmaker. Most days Juan works at the Muriel\u2019s home where it quickly becomes apparent that Eduardo deeply resents Beatriz, his wife. As Juan\u2019s curiosity about the reasons for Eduardo\u2019s animosity intensifies so too does his pity and desire for Beatriz. He begins eavesdropping on the couple\u2019s conversations to discover what lies behind Eduardo\u2019s inability to reciprocate his wife\u2019s affection. At the same time, Eduardo tasks Juan to uncover a different secret\u2014one related to a family friend\u2019s rumored blackmail and political exploitation. In uncovering truths about the Muriel family and their circle Juan is confronted with moral ambiguities and for the first time his conviction in the infallible demarcation between wronged and wrongdoer is compromised.<\/p>\n

A master storyteller, Mar\u00edas braids Juan\u2019s and Eduardo\u2019s narratives into a taut loop in which Eduardo\u2019s loves, hopes, heartbreaks, and disillusionments intersect and redouble Juan\u2019s. Yet it is the brilliance of Mar\u00edas\u2019s writing and Margaret Jull Costa\u2019s translation that makes this novel truly exceptional. And it is why Thus Bad Begins<\/em> deserves this year\u2019s Best Translated Book Award. Mar\u00edas may be our only living author worthy to be called a successor to Henry James. His prose digs deeper than his character\u2019s impressions, placing us inside Juan\u2019s mind as his thoughts are formed and reformed by experience and emotion. This is writing that is nuanced and introspective yet somehow retains an ample lightness and natural feeling so that it never risks collapsing under its own weight. Mar\u00edas\u2019s sentences demand to be reread and savored.<\/p>\n

For the title of his novel Mar\u00edas took a quote from Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet, \u201cThus bad begins and worse remains behind.\u201d It is an admonition to leave the ugly truths about the past, in the past; to not seek the truth because once known it can never be unknown. And it is the knowing that irrevocably changes everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Between the announcement of the Best Translated Book Award longlists and the unveiling of the finalists, we will be covering all thirty-five titles in the Why This Book Should Win series. Enjoy learning about all the various titles selected by the fourteen fiction and poetry judges, and I hope you find a few to purchase […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[35996,64586,48766,206,56906,13566,64956,37876],"class_list":["post-305796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba","tag-btba-2017","tag-btba-fiction","tag-javier-marias","tag-lori-feathers","tag-margaret-jull-costa","tag-thus-bad-begins","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305796"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":396712,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305796\/revisions\/396712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}