Research Information System
Uluslararası İstihbarat Çalışmaları Kongresi, İstanbul, Turkey, 10 - 12 October 2025, pp.208, (Summary Text)
This paper aims to trace how intelligence relates to observation from a practitioner’s perspective in Javier Marías’ magnum opus, Your Face Tomorrow. The esteemed Spanish writer’s threevolume work provides fertile ground for exploring the perceptual limitations of the observer-officer at the intersection of literature and intelligence studies, as observation emerges as a central theme intricately intertwined with the protagonist’s cognitive processes. By examining how the protagonist, Jaime Deza, capitalizes on his observational skills for threat assessment and linguistic profiling, this paper highlights the limitations of observation in intelligence analysis. These limitations include: (i) the interpretive burden of the observer-namely, the challenge of relying on minimal cues; (ii) emotional projection onto the observed subject; (iii) confirmation bias; (iv) overinterpretation; and (v) attribution error.