“Remarkable, fascinating . . . Cercas’s analysis of post-Franco Spain will be invaluable for any non-Spaniard trying to understand this complex period. Yet it’s not just for this that The Impostor is a great book. It is also because of the intellectual depth and even-handedness with which Cercas explores Marco’s lifelong lie and his motivations for telling it.” —Mark Nayler, El País (American edition)
“A fascinating, highly charged, scalpel-sharp dissection of Marco’s deception, which also looks at the dilemma of the justifiable lie, and the collective lies Spain told itself as it moved from dictatorship to democracy.” —The Times (UK)
“No Spanish writer has probed the unhealed wounds of the country’s history with more subtlety and rigour than Cercas . . . . The Impostor is a true story that even the most fanciful yarn-spinner would blush to invent . . . Mixing dogged research and testy, sparring interviews with the charming pretender, Cercas scrupulously tracks Marco’s big lie.” —The Economist
“A humane, artistically responsible, and civilised book, one that you finish feeling heartened that such a serious-minded writer as Cercas is at work.” —The Sunday Times
“Incandescent . . . Magnificent . . . In addition to an incisive journalistic investigation, Cercas’s book is a subtle essay on the nature of fiction and how it can infiltrate life and upset it . . . Marco’s illness is a disease of our time, that of a culture in which truth is less important than appearance, in which to perform is the best (perhaps the only) way of being and living. Fiction has replaced reality in the world we live in, and average characters from the real world don’t interest us. Fabricators do.” —Mario Vargas Llosa, El País
“Cercas probes this mysterious and extraordinary life with uncommon patience, uncommon skill, and uncommon sympathy . . . A fascinating book.” —The Scotsman
“Besides being a piece of nifty journalistic detective work, Cercas’s book is an insightful psychological study . . . Both convincing and compelling.” —The Spectator
“An awful lot here resonates—not just the buzzy issues of myth-making that dominate much of contemporary politics, but more enduring questions about the nature of truth and storytelling.” —Daily Mail
“Cercas’s best book to date . . . A marvelous book that readers will enjoy.” —ABC Cultural
