During the course of preparing this book, in addition to the customary reading of professional criticism on the work of Javier Marías, I sought also to stay abreast of the extensive flow of information about him on various blogs and internet sites. In this way I was able to compile an array of information from many sources offered from diverse points of view. As might be expected, some of what I found was quite useful, providing a detail here or an insight there into Marías's life and works. Marías is a popular figure among casual readers as well as academic scholars, and the content of the various websites generally reflected the diversity of readers and opinions on what is important or not, what is good or bad, about Marías's work.

Before sitting down to write this brief foreword, I entered the name “Javier Marías” one final time into the internet search engine Bing, and clicked on the submit button. As it turns out, my search produced a list of 242,000 entries (an increase of about one hundred over the week before)—not a surprising number given the volume of Marías's writing and the fact that his works have been translated into thirty-six languages. However, I feel compelled here to offer a qualification concerning my internet exploration: I have not read all of the entries listed under Marías's name, and further, it is highly unlikely that I will ever manage to do so.