State of Siege: Amazon.ca: Juan Goytisolo, Helen Lane: Books

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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
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A traveler looks out his hotel window on a war-torn city. A mortar explodes in his room and, when the police arrive, the corpse has disappeared and only a notebook of apocryphal writings and poems is found. These enigmas lead into a labyrinth, where blind and barbarous forces lay siege to individual lives and diverse cultures.

"State of Siege is a novel of pure fiction, but infinitely more powerful than all the big speeches about Bosnia."-Le Nouvel Observateur

"A passionate dialogue with the reader, a reflection on privacy and commitment [engagement], with the steady vigilant presence of a great literary voice."-Le Monde

"The reader is thrown into the unreality of a besieged city, as if a firm hand had rudely pushed him out of the tank that brought him from the airport."-L'Express

"For the Spaniard Juan Goytisolo, writing is a dangerous adventure."-Lire

"Dreams, reminiscences of the war in Spain, thoughts on the novel, borrowings from mystery and detective fiction, references to ancient cultures and Arabic culture, numerous allusions to the narrative structure of Don Quixote-these make up the form of this novel that, as the author says in an ironic and provocative way, isn't written 'according to the rules.'"-Fayard Presse

Juan Goytisolo was born in Barcelona in 1931 and lives in Marrakech. In 1993, he was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize for his literary achievement and contribution to world culture. His translated works include a two-volume autobiography, Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife, the novels Marks of Identity, Count Julian, Juan the Landless, Quarantine, Virtues of a Solitary Bird, The Marx Family Saga, and The Garden of Secrets, and the essays Saracen Chronicles and Landscapes of War.

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