Quarantine [Paperback]

Juan Goytisolo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1994

Quarantine, a novel by one of Spain's most provocative writers, recounts the forty days in which, according to Islamic tradition, the soul wanders between death and eternity, still in possession of a tenuous, dreamlike body. After the unexpected death of a friend, the narratora writer like Goytisolofollows her in his imagination into this otherworld where all kinds of implausible (or are they?) things occur.

Meanwhile, television and radio report the 40-day war in the Persian Gulf, and images of war's destruction mingle with the narrator's vivid imagination of the torments of the underworld. Simultaneously, the narrator is writing the novel we are reading, for writing itself is a kind of quarantine where the writer withdraws from the world to wander in the otherworld of the imagination.

Quarantine is thus both an exploration of the human condition and an investigation of the writing process. It celebrates friendship and denounces war with equal force, and despite the grim themes is filled with humor, shocking surprises, playful language, and love.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this rarefied experimental novel, Spanish novelist Goytisolo ( The Virtues of the Solitary Bird ) attempts to penetrate the 40-day waiting period between death and eternity when, according to Islamic tradition, the soul wanders still sheathed in a fragile, dreamlike body. The nameless narrator, a writer based in Paris (as is Goytisolo), learns of a friend's sudden death and joins her in the shadowy afterworld by dint of a leap of consciousness. Together and separately, they have chance encounters with celestial nomads who judge the dead. The friend meets the shade of Ibn Arabi, a 13th-century Sufi mystic whose portrayal of the afterlife influenced Dante's Divine Comedy. News of contemporary events, including the Persian Gulf war, filters through to them and mingles with other searing images of carnage and brutality. Besides injecting an eloquent antiwar message, Goytisolo draws parallels between the soul's journey in the next world and the act of writing, which to him involves "abolishing the frontiers between reality and dream." Bush, who translated Goytisolo's memoirs, deftly conveys the lyrical, complex, rhapsodic style used here to evoke spiritual transcendence.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Goytisolo, whose title refers to the Islamic tradition of wandering for 40 days between death and eternity, follows a recently deceased female friend who is also a novelist. It also symbolizes the isolation of the novelist at work as he multiplies levels of interpretation in order to "destabilize" the reader. As records all sorts of surrealistic events, news reports are blaring surrealistic accounts of the 40-day ordeal of Desert Storm. Bombs dropped on Baghdad and Basra are linked in the author's mind to bombs dropped on Barcelona, one of which felled Goytisolo's mother. Committed to plumbing both the human condition and the process of literary creation, the scholarly narrator ponders the alleged relationship between ibn Arabi's Book of the Descent of the Prophet and Dante's Inferno and even questions the relevance of Dante's vengeful Gehenna in today's world of enlightened humane values. A challenging work by one of the giants of Spanish literature.
- Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Interlink Publishing+group Inc (April 1, 1994)
• ISBN-10: 0704370727
• ISBN-13: 978-0704370722
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,187,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent journey into a land between life and death, July 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Quarantine (Hardcover)

Goytisolo continues one of the boldest adventures in modern literature with this eloquent journey into the world between life and death where, according to Muslim belief, the soul lingers on its way to final judgment. Written in Goytisolo's hallmark style of dark lyricism, in an intense, almost oratorical, diction, the novel transcends the possibility of its own genre - it quarantines you the reader in a dark and fierce joy before releasing you into the questionable light.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent journey into a land between life and death, July 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Quarantine (Hardcover)

Goytisolo continues one of the boldest adventures in modern literature with this eloquent journey into the world between life and death where, according to Muslim belief, the soul lingers on its way to final judgment. Written in Goytisolo's hallmark style of dark lyricism, in an intense, almost oratorical, diction, the novel transcends the possibility of its own genre - it quarantines you the reader in a dark and fierce joy before releasing you into the questionable light.