Javier Marìas

All Souls has a scene in which (like A Heart So White, and Your Face Tomorrow too kind of) an interpreter makes up his own questions during an interrogation of some kind; also, like the latter, a disquisition on how the word 'eavesdrop' doesn't exist in Spanish

oh to have time to reread these

Vaster than empires and more slow

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-worldly-digressions-of-javier-marias