Marias is one of the great contemporary literary writers, why then should I feel a need to defend him? I would agree with perhaps many that his work is, - 'Like a dawn that promises never to come,' In other words his work has an undissmissable darkness. And yet he is one writer who approaches the truth of post-modern writing with the seriousness that it deserves. Given that truth is relative and passing, Marias captures his time, and to him we must be grateful. Marias leads on from a short line of writers that began with Proust. Few authors display such psychological depth of understandings. I only claim him as being post modern because he wealds the scalpel of truth so revealingly. Few writers of fictions have these days the perceptivity, the subtleness and tact that allows him to express unpalatable truths about ourselves that have begged for centuries to find fitting expression. In short, Marias is a wonder of post-modern fiction and deserves a Nobel Prize. No-one like him can reveal the deep secrets of our common human nature. And no-one like him shall endure into the future as the most gifted author of our dark and hidden lives. Raymond Crane
Raymond Crane