Summary of All Souls
“All Souls” follows a Spanish language professor who teaches at All Souls College, University of Oxford. The novel centres on the professor’s love affair with the wife of a colleague, and on the web of intrigues within the university. While browsing Oxford’s second-hand bookshops, the professor becomes fascinated with the works of John Gawsworth, a forgotten British poet who once proclaimed himself King of Redonda, an uninhabited island in the Caribbean. Gradually, the protagonist discovers that Gawsworth may be linked to the family history of his lover.
Reasons to read All Souls
Based on Javier Marías’s own experiences teaching Spanish at the University of Oxford in the 1980s, “All Souls” is a reflective novel that explores themes of desire, memory, and solitude. Javier Marias was a celebrated Spanish novelist, who received many literary honours including the City of Barcelona Prize (in 1989 for “All Souls”), the Premio de la Crítica (in 1992 for “A Heart So White” and in 2017 for “Berta Isla”), the Premio Rómulo Gallegos in 1995 (for “Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me”), the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1997 (for “A Heart So White”), the International Nonino Prize in 2011, and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2011. “The Infatuations” won the Premio Nacional de Narrativa in 2012, but Marías declined the award.
Setting: Oxford (England, UK)
Original title: Todas las almas
Year of publication: 1989
Nr of pages: 224
