A Spanish novelist

Every morning I walk down the front steps of my house and pick up the little bundle of joy that is The New York Times, wrapped in one of those blue plastic bags well-informed people take with them when walking their dogs. Every so often there's something in that blue bag that deserves attention.

This from the Sunday edition (August 4, 2019) of The New York Times Magazine, a small excerpt from the new novel by the Spanish novelist Javier Marias, on the short-list they say for The Nobel Prize in Literature, 2019, caught my eye:

Politicians never dare to criticize the people, who are often base and cowardly and stupid...They have become untouchable and have taken the place of once despotic, absolutist monarchs. Like them, they have the prerogative to be as fickle as they please and to go eternally unpunished, and they don't have to answer for how they vote or who they elect or who they support ot what they remain silent about or consent to ot impose or acclaim.

The novel is "Berta Isla." The except appeared in the feature story on Marias, "Sins of the Fatherland" by Giles Harvey, pps. 22-27.