Marks of Identity - Softcover

A masterpiece which should whet the appetites of British readers for the rest of the trilogy (Times Literary Supplement)

Juan Goytisolo is by some distance the most important living novelist from Spain ... and Marks of Identity is undoubtedly his most important novel, some would say the most significant work by a Spanish writer since 1939, a truly historic milestone (Guardian)

A Spanish exile returns from Paris to his family home in Barcelona. The first volume of Goytisolo's great trilogy which includes Count Julian and Juan the Landless, Marks of Identity is a revealing reflection on exile. Goytisolo comes to the conclusion that every man carries his own exile about with him, wherever he lives. The narrator (Goytisolo) rejects Spain itself and searches instead for poetry, the word without history. Marks of Identity is a shocking and influential work, and an affirmation of the ability of the individual to survive the political tyrannies of our time.