Marías's novels "Corazón tan blanco" (1992) and "Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí" (1994), and his ever-expanding experiment with real fiction (begun with 1989's "Todas las almas" and continued through weekly newspaper columns, 1998's "Negra espalda del tiempo", and extended in his 21st century trilogy, "Tu rostro mañana"), placed him on numerous critics´ Nobel Prize shortlists.