A regular nominee for the Nobel, his books were as popular as they were lauded, filled with themes of mystery, betrayal and the moral weight of the past.
Javier Marías, a Spanish novelist whose elegant style and intricate plots centered on espionage, murder and betrayal won him comparisons to Marcel Proust and Ian Fleming, died on Sunday at his home in Madrid. He was 70. His publisher, Alfaguara, said the cause was pneumonia.
Though he was not particularly well-known in the United States, Mr. Marías was among the few writers to combine critical praise with a best-seller readership: He sold some eight million copies of his 14 novels, four books of short-stories and dozens of essay collections. His books were translated into 46 languages; his 1992 novel “Corazón Tan Blanco,” which was published in English in 1995 as “A Heart So White,” sold 1.3 million copies in Germany alone.
Mr. Marías occupied a reputational perch in Spanish culture that would be almost inconceivable for an American author. His novels were greeted like blockbuster summer films, he received practically every prize available to a Spanish writer, and he was regularly considered a favorite to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, one of the few awards to elude his grasp. Most critics considered him the greatest living Spanish writer; some said the greatest since Miguel de Cervantes.
