Forbidden Territory

Forbidden Territory is the extraordinary account of the intellectual awakening of Juan Goytisolo, Spain's preeminent living novelist. Born into the failing bourgeoisie of Barcelona in 1931, Goytisolo was raised within a milieu that strove blindly to maintain the pretenses of wealth and moral superiority. All objectivity was lost on this family that cheered the arrival of Franco even though Juan's mother had been killed by a Nationalist bomb in 1936. His were the people who supported the efforts of the Nazis in Germany and who were quick to denounce anyone they deemed "red," including their much beloved young servant, Maria. The intellectual and sensual suppression that marked the early years for Goytisolo was twofold. With the installation of the Franco regime came widespread intolerance in Spain; religious, political, and artistic censorship became the norm. Within this barren cultural environment, Goytisolo was isolated in a household that compounded his "intellectual orphanhood." After his mother's death, his father became a passive and rigid family leader. The atmosphere in their home was poisoned by hypocrisy; Juan's grandfather continued to live with them, despite the fact that he had molested the young boy. The bitterness that surrounded this arrangement only further confused Juan's sexual development, causing him much guilt over his homosexual inclinations. Complete intellectual intolerance forced Juan to self-education, which was guided by his natural abhorrence for things Nationalist -- antiquated bourgeois morality, including sexual and religious intolerance, and the staunch promotion of Spanish as the formal national language. Living as a pariah in his native country, Goytisolo found inspiration and perspective in his insatiable appetite for foreign literature, eventually embracing multi-lingualisim as his escape from the suppressive atmosphere of post-revolutionary Spain. Forbidden Territory alternates between a stately, eloquent first-person narrative and shorter, lyrical passages in which the author addresses himself in the second person, allowing for an objectivity that is rarely achieved in autobiography. Above all, Forbidden Territory chronicles the shaping -- against political, sexual, and social repression -- of a writer, and in turn, how the pursuit of a voice made Goytisolo a perpetual outsider, at ease in many languages and cultures, yet at home in none. - Jacket flap.