The Garden of Secrets - Softcover

Juan Goytisolo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852428090 ISBN 13: 9781852428099

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2003

Synopsis

"This work deserves the highest recognition . . . no-one can deny Juan Goytisolo is the main Spanish novelist on active service."—Carlos Fuentes

"A beautifully written metaphor for what it means to seek out the truth in a world often dominated by lies . . . this author, now 70 years of age, is one of the most brilliant of living writers."—The Los Angeles Times

Twenty-eight storytellers—one for each letter in the Arabic alphabet—meet in a garden to tell the story of a poet, Eusebio, arrested in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Eusebio, a friend of García Lorca and his circle, had escaped assassination and fled to North Africa.

Born in Barcelona, Juan Goytisolo left Spain in hatred of Franco. He now lives in Marrakesh, Morocco.

About this title

About the Author

Born in Barcelona in 1931, Juan Goytisolo is Spain's greatest living writer. A bitter opponent of the Franco regime, his early novels were banned in Spain. In 1956 he moved to Paris. Since then he has written extensively on the city as melting-pot, the expulsion of the Moors from Europe and the art of reading. In 2004 Goytisolo was awarded the Juan Rulfo International Latin American and Caribbean Prize for Literature. He lives in Morocco.

From Publishers Weekly

The life of Eusebio, a homosexual dissident poet who was a contemporary of Lorca, is the subject of this collection of interrelated short narratives, a tour-de-force in its range of styles and perspectives. When members of a reading group decide to compose a collaborative work on the events leading up to and following the poet's internment in a nightmarish state psychiatric hospital during the 1930s, their collage of stories results in an image of the writer as an eccentric, somewhat haunted and brilliant individual. Some of the stories attempt to reimagine Eusebio's life with journalistic accuracy. One describes his tiny hospital room, from which, until he escapes, he is able to catch only a small glimpse of the outside world; another chronicles his slippery responses to courtroom questioning, making his prevarications into acts of rebellion. The book is more entertaining when it goes farther afield than this, making suppositions about the poet's life that could not possibly be true but are fascinating possibilities. One simply stated tale concerns a man who transforms himself into a stork to spy on his adulterous wife; later, it is revealed that Eusebio transcribed the story from one told by a neighbor in the town where he spent his last days. Another storyteller fashions Eusebio into an impostor who names himself after a character in the cult novel The Saragossa Manuscript; this Eusebio dresses in drag, watches movies at all hours and rides in a chauffeured limousine. One only wishes that Goytisolo, author of numerous novels that blend a strong imagination with a stronger social conscience, had pursued some of his more whimsical impulses further. Still, the resulting work is a monument to ideological and intellectual integrity. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1852428090
• ISBN 13: 9781852428099
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160