Scan barcode
al_mutaghatris's review against another edition
5.0
voy añadir esta novela a mi lista de obras que te da más información y contexto cultural entre sus 300 paginas que un curso completo en la historia de un país. también voy añadirla a mi lista de novelas que crónica la derrota cultural en una manera que nos ofrece una lección política aún hoy día. una obra maestra.
screen_memory's review against another edition
4.0
Here Goytisolo's informal trilogy comes to its end for me, although the end as I know it is marked by the trilogy's beginning. Yes, I have read the series backwards, not deliberately but because I prefer most often to leave myself at the whim of what is stocked at my local bookstores.
It's been interesting to note the development of Goytisolo's so-called serpentine style as it has developed in reverse during my backwards reading; the explosive, acidic language of Landless had cooled to a near boil in Julian and simmered to a tepid outrage here in Marks. The narrative is linear, as linear as is possible with Goytisolo, whose prose is as characteristically windward as ever, although there is a more distinct delineation here between divergences in style or stories whereas they all melded together like a convulsive fever of dreams in the later books, but only if you're paying attention - stories and narrative modes still verge in and collapse in on one another, perspectives shift from a character witnessed in the third-person to the accusatory YOU of the second; a perspective which casts the reader as an exile, as landless, as one without a home.
Exile is heavily dealt with here, as is the Spanish civil war which produced Goytisolo's lifelong voluntary exile, as he puts it in a title of a book published decades later, "from almost everywhere." When one suffers exile, one is forever landless. The exile seeks comfort in the Muslim culture of the Moors in Spain or the Algerians in France, but neither can Allah or the culture produced unto His influence grant him the comfort he seeks.
The novel is not without Goytisolo's farcical sense of humor, however. In one notable scene, characters encounter an individual who claims to be on the side of the Republic the same as them, having served in the civil war on Franco's side. They correct him, explaining that if he fought for Franco, he fought against the Republic....
He insists he is telling the truth, and recalls the anthem they sang. "You've got your wars mixed up," one of the guys tells him. "That was against the Algerians." They all have a laugh at his expense, and one of them remarks thereafter: "The guy solved the Spanish problem once and for all. Everyobdy should follow his example.... Erase it and start all over again."
It's been interesting to note the development of Goytisolo's so-called serpentine style as it has developed in reverse during my backwards reading; the explosive, acidic language of Landless had cooled to a near boil in Julian and simmered to a tepid outrage here in Marks. The narrative is linear, as linear as is possible with Goytisolo, whose prose is as characteristically windward as ever, although there is a more distinct delineation here between divergences in style or stories whereas they all melded together like a convulsive fever of dreams in the later books, but only if you're paying attention - stories and narrative modes still verge in and collapse in on one another, perspectives shift from a character witnessed in the third-person to the accusatory YOU of the second; a perspective which casts the reader as an exile, as landless, as one without a home.
Exile is heavily dealt with here, as is the Spanish civil war which produced Goytisolo's lifelong voluntary exile, as he puts it in a title of a book published decades later, "from almost everywhere." When one suffers exile, one is forever landless. The exile seeks comfort in the Muslim culture of the Moors in Spain or the Algerians in France, but neither can Allah or the culture produced unto His influence grant him the comfort he seeks.
The novel is not without Goytisolo's farcical sense of humor, however. In one notable scene, characters encounter an individual who claims to be on the side of the Republic the same as them, having served in the civil war on Franco's side. They correct him, explaining that if he fought for Franco, he fought against the Republic....
He insists he is telling the truth, and recalls the anthem they sang. "You've got your wars mixed up," one of the guys tells him. "That was against the Algerians." They all have a laugh at his expense, and one of them remarks thereafter: "The guy solved the Spanish problem once and for all. Everyobdy should follow his example.... Erase it and start all over again."