State of Siege [Paperback]

Juan Goytisolo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 25, 2003

A writer looks out from his hotel room in Sarajevo at a city under siege. He watches a woman struggling to avoid the snipers as she makes her way home. Suddenly a mortar explodes nearby and he is killed. But by the time the Spanish military investigator arrives, the corpse has disappeared, leaving only a few personal effects and a notebook of stories and poems, marked with the initials, J.G. As the investigator continues his search for the man's identity, he begins to read the stories, of dreams of a rebellion of a city's underclass, of a district of Paris under siege that is ignored by the rest of the city. As he paints a compelling picture of a city laid waste by the barbarism of war, another picture begins to emerge, of a society so callous it is capable of standing by and watching its citizens be destroyed.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The often-confounding, but ultimately rewarding, narrative lines running circles through State of Siege find Spanish novelist Goytisolo combining a Borgesian spirit of play with the lyrically righteous anger at oppression perfected by Eduardo Galeano. Set during the siege of Sarajevo (with serpentine side trips to a Paris neighborhood also under siege), the book displays all the earmarks of magic realism--unexplained disappearances, people discovering they may be fictional characters, reincarnated saints, and dizzying shifts in narrative perspective that somehow manage to retain a similar authorial voice. But midway through, Goytisolo provides plausible explanations for all that has transpired--only to begin playing tricks with reality anew. Readers game enough to follow the twists and turns will find the tale most effective in underscoring the tragic absurdity of sieges whose victims can only guess at the rationale of their persecutors, and of international "peacekeeping" forces that help maintain the bloody status quo by treating the hunters and the hunted equally. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

'At once an account of the siege of Sarajevo, a parade of postmodern storytelling techniques and an indictment of Western indifference' New York Times 'This short, chilling novel further strengthens the views of many who feel that Goytisolo could be Europe's next Nobel Prize winner' Bloomsbury Review Translated by Helen Lane

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Serpents Tail (September 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1852428392
• ISBN-13: 978-1852428396
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,326,876 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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