Exiled from Almost Everywhere

by Juan Goytisolo, Peter Bush (Translator)

Overview

In "Exiled from Almost Everywhere," Juan Goytisolo's perverse mutant protagonist—the Parisian "Monster of Le Sentier"—is blown up by an extremist bomber and finds himself in the cyberspace of the Thereafter with an infinite collection of computer monitors. His curiosity piqued, he uses the screens at hand to explore the multiple ways war and terrorism are hyped in the Hereafter of his old life where he once happily cruised bathrooms and accosted children. Ricocheting from life to death and back again, meeting various colorful demagogues along the way—the imam "Alice," a pedophile Monsignor, and a Rastafarian rabbi—our "Monster" revisits seedy democracies that are a welter of shopping-cities and righteous violence voted in by an eternally duped citizenry and defended by the infamous erogenous bomb. At once fantastical and cruelly real, "Exiled from Almost Everywhere" hurtles the reader through our troubled times in a Swiftian series of grisly cartoon screenshots.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564786357
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	04/19/2011
Series:	Spanish Literature
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ne a Barcelone, en 1931, intellectuel engage, oppose au franquisme, Juan Goytisolo s'est tres tot exile a Paris. Aujourd'hui installe a Marrakech, il est devenu un critique implacable de la civilisation occidentale. Auteur d'une quinzaine de romans et de nombreux essais, il a recu, en 1985, le prix Europalia pour l'ensemble de son uvre, en 2002 le prix Octavio Paz, en 2004 le prix Juan Rulfo de litterature latino-americaine et caribeenne, et en novembre 2008 le prestigieux Prix national des Lettres espagnoles.Photo: Circulo de Lectores.

Peter Bush has translated nine books by Juan Goytisolo, including "Exiled from Almost Everywhere" and "Juan the Landless", as well as novels by other prominent Spanish and Latin American writers.

Editorial Reviews

Goytisolo (Young Assassins) misfires in this frustrating intellectual exercise, a circuitous journey into the virtual military industrial complex. Blown up in a terrorist attack, the Monster of Le Sentier lands in the Hereafter—a giant cybercafe—and makes some dangerous new friends, such as Alice, an expert in explosives manufacturing who sweeps him into the "machine of subversion" and the planning of the bombing of an "emblematic" public building. In brief bursts of shifting stream-of-consciousness, the would-be terrorist deals with fringe groups and dubious characters—a monsignor who molests the children he purports to aid; a corrupt "Father of the People." Goytisolo's frenetic and paranoid effort is full of frantic action, but is so unfortunately light on things that appeal to most readers—logic, coherence, characters you might care about—that the whole project reeks of self-indulgence. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Exiled From Almost Everywhere is perhaps the best work of Goytisolo's later period. The author, who in his 20s, wrote realistic novels that described the vulgar horrors of Franco's Spain, from which he was exiled, later began to develop a freer, less traditional, more ironic and humorous voice. Nowhere is this style more accomplished than in this novel, beautifully translated into English by Peter Bush . . . Under the appearance of a wicked romp, Exiled From Almost Everywhere is a profound work that demands close attention from its readers – who, as the author confesses at the end, must remain bewildered by its Wonderland invention. Something has taken place, something has been described that escapes the frame of the story, in which, magically, reader, writer and murky protagonist coalesce.”

The Guardian