What do you think?
Rate this book
Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife: The Memoirs of Juan Goytisolo
For forty-five years, the expatriate Juan Goytisolo has been widely acknowledged as both Spain’s greatest living writer and its most scabrous critic. In some thirty books of fiction, autobiography, essays and journalism, he has turned the Spanish language against what he derides as ‘Sunnyspain’, flaying the ‘Hispanos’ while excavating their culture’s Moorish and Jewish roots.
This, his masterful two-volume autobiography first published in the mid-1980s, broke new ground in Spanish letters with its introspective sexual and emotional honesty. It charts the writer’s unique journey from a Barcelona childhood violently disrupted by the Spanish civil war to student rebellion against the Francoist dictatorship and exile as a ‘self-banished Spaniard’ to Paris in 1956.
In Paris, Goytisolo fell in love with Monique Lange, befriended Jean Genet, and discovered his own homosexuality as he supported the struggles for Algerian independence. His passionate, iconoclastic pen spares no one, least of all himself, in this striking portrayal of politics and sexuality in twentieth-century France and Spain.
This, his masterful two-volume autobiography first published in the mid-1980s, broke new ground in Spanish letters with its introspective sexual and emotional honesty. It charts the writer’s unique journey from a Barcelona childhood violently disrupted by the Spanish civil war to student rebellion against the Francoist dictatorship and exile as a ‘self-banished Spaniard’ to Paris in 1956.
In Paris, Goytisolo fell in love with Monique Lange, befriended Jean Genet, and discovered his own homosexuality as he supported the struggles for Algerian independence. His passionate, iconoclastic pen spares no one, least of all himself, in this striking portrayal of politics and sexuality in twentieth-century France and Spain.
320 pages, Paperback
First published February 4, 1987
6 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Juan Goytisolo
177 books168 followersDesde la trilogía formada por Señas de identidad, Don Julián y Juan sin tierra, que le situó entre los mejores autores de la literatura española contemporánea, la obra narrativa de Juan Goytisolo (Barcelona, 1931) ha derivado en cada nueva singladura hacia territorios inexplorados que cuestionan siempre el género de la ficción. Esta voluntad de ir a contracorriente ha propiciado la gestación de textos tan singulares como Makbara (1980), Las virtudes del pájaro solitario (1988), La cuarentena (1991), La saga de los Marx (1993), El sitio de los sitios (1995), Las semanas del jardín (1997), Carajicomedia (2000), Telón de boca (2003) o El exiliado de aquí y allá (2008).
No obstante, Juan Goytisolo no destaca sólo como autor de ficción, sino que también cultiva con maestría el género del ensayo, con obras como Contra las sagradas formas (2007) o Genet en el Raval (2009). En 2014 se le ha otorgado el Premio Cervantes de las Letras.
========
Juan Goytisolo Gay was born in Barcelona at 1931. A vocal opponent of Franco, he left Spain for France in 1956.
In Paris, he worked as a consultant for the publisher Gallimard while he was also working on his own oeuvre. There he met his future wife, Monique Langue, and Jean Genet, who influenced his vision of literature. While living in Paris, he started the most experimental side of his books. Mixing poetry with painting and fiction with non-fiction, he explored the possibilities of language, leaving behind the social commentary of his first novels. "Marks of Identity" was the start, but then he turned even more radical with "Count Julian" and "Juan the Landless", where he rejected definitely, because of a lack of identification, his Spanish identity in favor of adopting a "cervantina" nationality.
In the 1970s he visited Marrakech often. In 1981 he bought a house there. In 1996, after the death of his wife, he moved there and adopted Morocco as his main residence.
He is widely considered one of the most important Spanish authors of his time. His brothers, José Agustín Goytisolo and Luis Goytisolo, are also writers. In 2008 he won Spain's Premio Nacional de las Letras and in 2014 the Cervantes Prize.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Goy...
No obstante, Juan Goytisolo no destaca sólo como autor de ficción, sino que también cultiva con maestría el género del ensayo, con obras como Contra las sagradas formas (2007) o Genet en el Raval (2009). En 2014 se le ha otorgado el Premio Cervantes de las Letras.
========
Juan Goytisolo Gay was born in Barcelona at 1931. A vocal opponent of Franco, he left Spain for France in 1956.
In Paris, he worked as a consultant for the publisher Gallimard while he was also working on his own oeuvre. There he met his future wife, Monique Langue, and Jean Genet, who influenced his vision of literature. While living in Paris, he started the most experimental side of his books. Mixing poetry with painting and fiction with non-fiction, he explored the possibilities of language, leaving behind the social commentary of his first novels. "Marks of Identity" was the start, but then he turned even more radical with "Count Julian" and "Juan the Landless", where he rejected definitely, because of a lack of identification, his Spanish identity in favor of adopting a "cervantina" nationality.
In the 1970s he visited Marrakech often. In 1981 he bought a house there. In 1996, after the death of his wife, he moved there and adopted Morocco as his main residence.
He is widely considered one of the most important Spanish authors of his time. His brothers, José Agustín Goytisolo and Luis Goytisolo, are also writers. In 2008 he won Spain's Premio Nacional de las Letras and in 2014 the Cervantes Prize.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Goy...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 12, 2015
I am an American writer living in Mexico, so for many years now I have been exploring and trying to understand the ethos of Spain, and how it affected the various countries that received it at the time of conquest. Years ago I looked at books, works of art, and films by Spanish artists as a kind of cipher, unfamiliar and distant. When I read this quiet, exacting (and it must be said, rather stern and humorless) book, I understood much more. Goytisolo is a ruthless critic of Spain and its upper classes (a system which was recreated here in Mexico) and no less a ruthless critic of himself. He was struggling with the chokehold of a family in a fallen and irrelevant aristocracy that welcomed Franco, with the emergence of his homosexuality in a culture rigidly opposed to any sign of it, to the censorship of books that were his lifeline to becoming a writer, to bad Argentine translations of American literature -- so many things that say so much about Spain during that period. And that was just in the first volume. I am currently reading the second, which will explore among many other things, Arab and Moroccan culture as part of his Spanish heritage.
As a writer, I am fed by this slow read, mesmerized by his quiet, almost hypnotic use of language at times. Though I am not much of a fan of the Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes (he bores me with his preciousness and intellectual distance), I do agree with his assessment of Goytisolo as perhaps the greatest living Spanish writer.
As a writer, I am fed by this slow read, mesmerized by his quiet, almost hypnotic use of language at times. Though I am not much of a fan of the Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes (he bores me with his preciousness and intellectual distance), I do agree with his assessment of Goytisolo as perhaps the greatest living Spanish writer.
September 8, 2022
Juan Goytisolo's two memoirs - Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife are patchworks of reflections on life under Franco fascism, discontent with Soviet communism, and wrestling with fluid sexuality.
Goytisolo was born into a conservative, right-wing, Basque family in Barcelona just before the rise of Franco fascism. As he wrestled with his origins and eventually split from them, Goytisolo meets a cast of leftist characters who bring him into adjacency with the Communist Party. Among these is Monique Lange, an editor at Gallimard in Paris, who would go on to become Goytisolo's long-time lover. And yet as Goytisolo matures he realizes two important facts. First, that much of politics on the left carries many of the same anti-democratic dangers inherent on the right (as seen foremostly in Stalin's USSR and Castro's Cuba). And second: that he is in fact gay.
I came upon these memoirs after learning that Goytisolo was close friends (for a time) with Jean Genet, and I see now why I am glad that Genet did not write his own memoirs. Goytisolo - much like Genet - writes in dense, long prose. In itself, this is not an issue and can be quite beautiful but when used by Goytisolo to discuss his inner thoughts and turmoils, the language becomes a bog from which one cannot escape quickly nor easily. While I would love a biography on Goytisolo, his memoirs leave him as the enigma history has continued to make him.
Goytisolo was born into a conservative, right-wing, Basque family in Barcelona just before the rise of Franco fascism. As he wrestled with his origins and eventually split from them, Goytisolo meets a cast of leftist characters who bring him into adjacency with the Communist Party. Among these is Monique Lange, an editor at Gallimard in Paris, who would go on to become Goytisolo's long-time lover. And yet as Goytisolo matures he realizes two important facts. First, that much of politics on the left carries many of the same anti-democratic dangers inherent on the right (as seen foremostly in Stalin's USSR and Castro's Cuba). And second: that he is in fact gay.
I came upon these memoirs after learning that Goytisolo was close friends (for a time) with Jean Genet, and I see now why I am glad that Genet did not write his own memoirs. Goytisolo - much like Genet - writes in dense, long prose. In itself, this is not an issue and can be quite beautiful but when used by Goytisolo to discuss his inner thoughts and turmoils, the language becomes a bog from which one cannot escape quickly nor easily. While I would love a biography on Goytisolo, his memoirs leave him as the enigma history has continued to make him.
September 4, 2023
Juan Goytisolo
Forbidden Territory & Realms of Strife
The double volume autobiography of the anti-Francoist writer Juan Goytisolo.
Forbidden Territory, as the first volume, is an intimate account of childhood perception and upbringing. It's intriguing for alternating between the first person narrative and an italicised second person *you* in its chapters. It balances the paradox of a narrator retelling childhood events with a retrospective psychological assessment, and addresses the young Juan, as if to help the child understand himself. Family dynamics, privilege and prejudices are laid out, depicting a world that is gradually lost, as swindlers and men with big ideas take advantage of an father who is prey to right-leaning men with fanciful ideas and innovations. For those who have read his brother Luis Goytisolo's Antagony, this will be familiar territory, but with an interrogative yet self-doubting autobiographical lens. As the protective cocoon of family wealth and ambition for status disappears, Goytisolo finds himself building another shell in a false masculinity and idealisation, as if to hide himself from his nascent homosexuality.
There's three stories at play here. There's the historical view of Barcelona and Spain in the Civil War and under Franco, and its interplay with family life and Goytisolo's education. Secondly there's the story of the burgeoning consciousness of the individual opposed to his surroundings, alienated from them and evolving into the future writer. And finally the tortured journey of intimacy to discovering a true companionship with future wife Monique Lange in semi exile.
In Realms of Strife, the battles with external forces are internalised, making the fights with conscience and desire even greater. Goytisolo finds less refuge in ideals, or in the falsity of frenetic social activity and a persona as a writer of the Spanish resistance. The realms are firstly the physical territories of political journalism and meetings with leaders in Cuba and the Soviet Union, before being disenchanted with their models of socialism. But also, the realms of his own self: retreating into himself, he begins more and more to struggle with his position within his open relationship with Monique, having used this as a way of closeting himself, and denying the potential for emotional honesty about his need for an expression of his homosexual life too.
Goytisolo is frank about his emotional difficulties, depressive states, and hostile attitude to himself and his relationship. His candid account of his own spiteful behaviour isn't easy to read. It is through the close friendships with Jean Genet, and his more intimate affairs that he is able to finally confess his nature to Monique in a startling letter. It is not an easy read, but one raw with self-effacement and regret at the damage caused to others in the attempt to grapple with his dual nature. That he and Monique are able to forge a new form of open marriage and family life is a testament to her emotional resilience, but also a reflection of her openness and fascination with queer identities, and what might currently be described as her non-binary self-questioning. It is fascinating to read about a couple having to evolve with each other, into their own queer identities, finding new harmonies and self-definitions between Spain and France from the 50s to the 80s.
There's beautiful writing in every sentence through both books, and every statement is made taking into account nuances that reflect the complexity of human nature and a keen sensitivity to social dynamics. This doesn't make for light reading however, and overall the text can feel very dense. You can feel Goytisolo deliberating too much over political and personal positioning with retrospective caveats. His development from rightist youth and family, to idealistic left of a Parisian intellectual in self-imposed exile, and then a more principled and open-eyed view of human rights and universal suffering as a mature writer is frank and convincing.
Its baroque style and content is sometimes overwrought; it is easy to lose sight of the liberating arc of a life's summation and achievements. But maybe I expect too much of a volume titled Forbidden Territory & Realms of Strife, when grappling with the finer shades of existence Goytisolo's project allows a conscious acceptance of a complex and contradictory self.
Forbidden Territory & Realms of Strife
The double volume autobiography of the anti-Francoist writer Juan Goytisolo.
Forbidden Territory, as the first volume, is an intimate account of childhood perception and upbringing. It's intriguing for alternating between the first person narrative and an italicised second person *you* in its chapters. It balances the paradox of a narrator retelling childhood events with a retrospective psychological assessment, and addresses the young Juan, as if to help the child understand himself. Family dynamics, privilege and prejudices are laid out, depicting a world that is gradually lost, as swindlers and men with big ideas take advantage of an father who is prey to right-leaning men with fanciful ideas and innovations. For those who have read his brother Luis Goytisolo's Antagony, this will be familiar territory, but with an interrogative yet self-doubting autobiographical lens. As the protective cocoon of family wealth and ambition for status disappears, Goytisolo finds himself building another shell in a false masculinity and idealisation, as if to hide himself from his nascent homosexuality.
There's three stories at play here. There's the historical view of Barcelona and Spain in the Civil War and under Franco, and its interplay with family life and Goytisolo's education. Secondly there's the story of the burgeoning consciousness of the individual opposed to his surroundings, alienated from them and evolving into the future writer. And finally the tortured journey of intimacy to discovering a true companionship with future wife Monique Lange in semi exile.
In Realms of Strife, the battles with external forces are internalised, making the fights with conscience and desire even greater. Goytisolo finds less refuge in ideals, or in the falsity of frenetic social activity and a persona as a writer of the Spanish resistance. The realms are firstly the physical territories of political journalism and meetings with leaders in Cuba and the Soviet Union, before being disenchanted with their models of socialism. But also, the realms of his own self: retreating into himself, he begins more and more to struggle with his position within his open relationship with Monique, having used this as a way of closeting himself, and denying the potential for emotional honesty about his need for an expression of his homosexual life too.
Goytisolo is frank about his emotional difficulties, depressive states, and hostile attitude to himself and his relationship. His candid account of his own spiteful behaviour isn't easy to read. It is through the close friendships with Jean Genet, and his more intimate affairs that he is able to finally confess his nature to Monique in a startling letter. It is not an easy read, but one raw with self-effacement and regret at the damage caused to others in the attempt to grapple with his dual nature. That he and Monique are able to forge a new form of open marriage and family life is a testament to her emotional resilience, but also a reflection of her openness and fascination with queer identities, and what might currently be described as her non-binary self-questioning. It is fascinating to read about a couple having to evolve with each other, into their own queer identities, finding new harmonies and self-definitions between Spain and France from the 50s to the 80s.
There's beautiful writing in every sentence through both books, and every statement is made taking into account nuances that reflect the complexity of human nature and a keen sensitivity to social dynamics. This doesn't make for light reading however, and overall the text can feel very dense. You can feel Goytisolo deliberating too much over political and personal positioning with retrospective caveats. His development from rightist youth and family, to idealistic left of a Parisian intellectual in self-imposed exile, and then a more principled and open-eyed view of human rights and universal suffering as a mature writer is frank and convincing.
Its baroque style and content is sometimes overwrought; it is easy to lose sight of the liberating arc of a life's summation and achievements. But maybe I expect too much of a volume titled Forbidden Territory & Realms of Strife, when grappling with the finer shades of existence Goytisolo's project allows a conscious acceptance of a complex and contradictory self.
July 9, 2018
Sparkling, lively, irreverent. Rather coincidental reading this simultaneous to the Lessing fictionalized account of coming to terms with disillusionment following initial hopefulness regarding communism. But so much more here. Goytisolo is also dealing with his family's full throated support of Spanish fascism under Franco, being molested by his grandfather but quite unexpectedly feeling his father's mistreatment and ostracism of his father-in-law was not justified, recognition of his own homosexuality in conjunction with a burgeoning love of all marginalized people, with a particular affinity for islamic societies but with no religious trappings to this attraction. He loves and marries French intellectual Monique Lange and through her and the attention his writing garners meets many influential thinkers, notably Genet, Sartre, de Beauvoir, etc. His political forays lead mostly to misunderstanding, severed friendships and failure. He is brutally honest about his own shortcomings but also ruthless in the manner he realizes he must live despite any hurt feelings he must unavoidably cause along the way.
Read
August 16, 2010Memoir of Spanish writer who grew up in a Franco-ist family and recalls a childhood that included the Civil War when his mother travelling into Barcelona was killed by bombs from an air raid. Was it this blow or a combination of it and being molested by his grandfather that gave G. such an entrenched feeling of not belonging? He shucked off the influence of religion and Franco early on and eventually emigrated to France to write. He was a communist in spirit but never fully a member, became a longtime lover of a French woman despite knowing of his own latent homosexuality. Only in his 30s does he reconcile his sexuality and find a certain peace within himself. Knew Jean Genet and had fleeting encounters with Hemingway and Faulkner. Oddly mesmeric kind of writing.
December 2, 2023
Such a wonderful, sensitive translation from Peter Bush. That has to be said first of all.
As well, it’s so rare to read such brutal honesty about the author's evolving sexuality and highly-personal inner landscape. Through creamy prose he makes a sharp dissection of the “ill-formed universe” of his bourgeois upbringing.
From a wider point of view, I'm continually surprised how little Juan Goytisolo is known today, even in Catalonia. He was a Barcelona-born progressive iconoclast who lived by his left-wing beliefs and regularly paid a price for doing.
As a critic of the dictator General Franco and the extreme right-wing in general, he was held in regard in literary circles across Europe for his books such as “Campos de Níjar,” which detailed the harsh social and economic conditions in 1950s Andalucia (also brilliantly translated into English by Peter Bush.)
As a writer, I was also inspired by “Forbidden Territory” (essentially Goytisolo’s autobiography) and quoted from it in several places in my travelogue, "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain."
(Part of the above review was adapted from my article for Catalonia Today magazine, "Real red: Corbyn, Goytisolo and the rallying of the left")
As well, it’s so rare to read such brutal honesty about the author's evolving sexuality and highly-personal inner landscape. Through creamy prose he makes a sharp dissection of the “ill-formed universe” of his bourgeois upbringing.
From a wider point of view, I'm continually surprised how little Juan Goytisolo is known today, even in Catalonia. He was a Barcelona-born progressive iconoclast who lived by his left-wing beliefs and regularly paid a price for doing.
As a critic of the dictator General Franco and the extreme right-wing in general, he was held in regard in literary circles across Europe for his books such as “Campos de Níjar,” which detailed the harsh social and economic conditions in 1950s Andalucia (also brilliantly translated into English by Peter Bush.)
As a writer, I was also inspired by “Forbidden Territory” (essentially Goytisolo’s autobiography) and quoted from it in several places in my travelogue, "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain."
(Part of the above review was adapted from my article for Catalonia Today magazine, "Real red: Corbyn, Goytisolo and the rallying of the left")
August 11, 2016
A close investigation of the development of Goytisolo's oeuvre reveals an author who took some considerable time arriving at being the master he was to become. He achieved tremendous success at an early age, but did not begin producing works of truly singular vision (naturally, they were less successful at finding a large readership than his early, more palatable works) until he was significantly older. In is perhaps not surprising then that this bifurcated diptych of autobiography is a coming-of-age story that ends in the writer's mid-to-late thirties. It was at this point, the reader may surmise, that Goytisolo became Goytisolo, and it is no coincidence that this coincides w/ his finding Morocco. In many ways this is an extremely impressive and exacting work of self-reveal (in which a self could be said to be revealed to itself as well as to the reader). It is in some sense very clinical, and the sense that Goytisolo may be a clinician studying Goytisolo, is emphasized by the occasional switching of tenses. Sometimes he speaks of Goytisolo in the third person, more often the second (addressing the actions of a "you" which is actually himself). In some passages this appears to be done as a way of taking a certain amount of distance from personal ownership of actions. Some of the things Goytisolo has done are - in more than one case explicitly - attributed to a mysterious phantom acting in the author's name. However, this is primarily a book in which a man indeed does take ownership (possession, even) of his activity. There is a contradiction here, and I believe it fundamental. The least interesting parts of the book (the section on the complications and micropolitics surrounding the doomed journal Libération, for example) are those concerned w/ getting the records straight. The book is far more valuable when dealing w/ family, relationships, consciousness-raising, and, of course, sexuality.
December 17, 2017
Buen compendio autobiográfico. Tremendo periplo vital y buena "conquista" de su lengua por un autor barcelonés que, confiesa al principio, tenía ese castellano raquítico tan de Barcelona. A lo largo de libro, encuentro un paralelismo con el autor: ese leísmo al que tienden sin remedio los barceloneses. Léxico bello, bien armado e inabarcable, con o sin leísmos.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews