Marks of Identity

(, Main)

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Description

A Spanish exile returns from Paris to his family home in Barcelona. This first volume of Goytisolo's great trilogy which includes Count Julian and Juan the Landless, Marks of Identity is a revealing autobiographical reflection on exile. Goytisolo comes to the conclusion that every man carries his own exile about with him, wherever he lives. The narrator (Goytisolo) rejects Spain itself and searches instead for poetry 'the word without history'. Marks of identity is a shocking and influential work, and an affirmation of the ability of the individual to survive the political tyrannies of the last century and the current one.

Reviews

'Marks of Identity a masterpiece which should whet the appetites of British readers for the rest of the trilogy.' Times Literary Supplement

Author Bio

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. His novels include Marks of Identity, Count Julian, Juan the Landless, Landscapes After the Battle and The Virtues of the Solitary Bird. He lives in Morocco.