Marks of Identity [Paperback]

Juan Goytisolo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2007

An exile returns to Spain from France to find that he is repelled by the fascism of Franco's Spain and drawn to the world of Muslim culture. In this novel, Juan Goytisolo, one of Spain's most celebrated novelists, speaks for a generation of Spaniards who were small children during the Spanish Civil War, grew up under a stifling dictatorship, and, in many cases, emigrated in desperation from their dying country. Upon his return, the narrator confronts the most controversial political, religious, social, and sexual issues of our time with ferocious energy and elegant prose. Torn between the Islamic and European worlds around him, he finds both ultimately unsatisfactory. In the end, only displacement survives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The reissue of this 1969 translation of a Spanish tour-de-force should captivate those who prize the elegant lyricism and complexity of Latin American fiction. Eschewing political dogma, Goytisolo's ( Forbidden Territory )BIP theme--explored in styles ranging from stream-of-consciousness to those imitative of bureaucratic memoranda--is exile and expatriation. The hero returns from Paris to Goytisolo's native Barcelona after ten years' absence, confronting the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and his ruptured relationship to Catholicism and machismo culture. Patience is required to navigate Goytisolo's often serpentine sentences, many of which consume several pages. But the prose, presented here in a luxuriant translation, attains hypnotic, incantatory powers. Its density is remarkably evocative: referring to one servant, for example, the narrator notes that she was "less self-abnegating, however, his Aunt Mercedes would remind them, than that other legendary maid who after an existence of privation . . . left the entire amount of her savings to that scornful grandfather of his who had exploited her during her lifetime."
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Undoubtedly the greatest living Spanish novelist." --Carlos Fuentes

"It is natural that Goytisolo should immediately bring Joyce, Malcolm Lowry, Beckett, and even Nabokov to mind." --V.S. Pritchett

"Marks of Identity expresses an angry and painful struggle--that of a man who has no love for his country, his generation or himself. . . . Whoever is interested in the Spain of today and tomorrow owes it to themselves to read this passionate literary account." --Le Monde

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr (April 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564784533
• ISBN-13: 978-1564784537
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #819,296 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marks of Identity, April 7, 2008

By 

A. Soto - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marks of Identity (Paperback)

This book is complex and interesting like the review states. Goytisolo is a great writer and lets you see the depth of his anger towards Catholicism, politics, and the anguish he endured during his childhood in all his works. He is an accomplished writer from Spain and it's too bad he is not read and possibly unheard of by many people here in the United States. More people should be exposed to literature from other countries.

P.S. the editorial reviewer is very wrong on one thing... Goytisolo is NOT a Latin American writer. He is not from Latin America, he his from Spain. Spain is no where in the America's. However, he can be called Hispanic because Spain and the countries that were once colonized by Spain were once Hispanola, hence Hispanic.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Prose of the highest order, December 5, 2009

By 

arukiyomi (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marks of Identity (Paperback)

Now the 1001 Books list has its critics. But quite honestly, it's books like Marks of Identity that reinforce my commitment to it. I've never heard of the title or the author and check out that front cover in the photo. Frankly, on the strength of a photo of a stuffed rabbit, some straw, a bit of rusty corrugated iron and a blue torso, I would never have picked this up. I did so simply because it was on the list.

Boy, I'm glad I did pick it up though. Goytisolo's novel is the first one that has moved me with its writing in so many ways for a long time.

The 'story' takes place while Alvaro Mendiola drinks in the night air in his apartment in Cuban exile. From beginning to end, this event must last no more than a couple of hours at the most. But as he drinks, Alvaro starts to recall his life from his childhood to his student days, to the Spanish Civil War and afterwards with self-imposed exile to Paris and, eventually, Cuba.

But these flashbacks are amazing. For each one, Goytisolo adopts some remarkable styles of writing. I was never sure what was coming next. Some of his sentences stretch on for pages and pages. But they're not tough to read. I never had morbid fear as I turned a page like I have had with some books that just seem to go on and on and on. I was engaged throughout.

Goytisolo's depiction of the messy war is very moving and intimate. He uses some great prose to conjure up vivid images and metaphors which reinforce this. And there's a large cast of characters who play his associates and friends, his enemies and, above all, his lover who appears from time to time always with a tinge of melancholy.

This novel, as all good ones should, opened up a world to me and engaged me in it. Highly recommended.