One could be forgiven for suspecting the indefatigable Spanish novelist Javier Marías of waging a one-man campaign to rejuvenate that aging and underappreciated genre, the novel of ideas. He has written over two dozen books, less than half of which have been translated into English, and for all their postmodern antics—unreliable narrators, shaggy-dog asides, a blending of the biographical and the fictional, and the radical indeterminacy of truth—there is a seriousness of purpose, an eagerness to engage with philosophical and metaphysical questions and to incorporate them into a gripping story. In an interview ten years ago, Marías outlined the intent that underlies his novels:

In my books there is not only the action, the characters, the story and so forth; there is reflection as well, and often the action stops. The narrator then makes a series of considerations and meditations. There is a tradition within the novel form, almost forgotten now, which embodies what I call literary thinking or literary thought. It’s a way of thinking which takes place only in literature—the things you never think of or hit upon unless you are writing fiction. Unlike philosophical thinking, which demands an argument without logical flaws and contradictions, literary thinking allows you to contradict yourself.

Marías’s latest, a three-volume epistemological spy novel, Your Face Tomorrow, is no different. Volume One, Fever and Spear, opens with an ironic enjoinder against ever revealing anything, even of the dead:

One should never tell anyone anything or