He has sold about five million books worldwide, wrote a meter in books and has been nominated as the Spanish candidate of the Nobel Prize for years. He has probably held interviews with a few thousand people and has surely done more than enough posing for the camera. Then they give you just under an hour – including photography – and good luck with your interview with Javier Marías. Yet it turned into a beautiful conversation about substantial matters, such as death and mourning, and the five minutes of photography resulted in a number of very splendid portraits.