This potent drama, a collected volume of Goytisolo's famed tetralogy following a Catalan family, is widely regarded as one of the most profound inquiries ever undertaken on literary creation.

Antagony surveys the social history of Barcelona and Catalonia, primarily since the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. The work, originally published as a tetralogy and now collected into one volume, follows the youth and education of Raul Ferrer Gaminde, son of a well-connected, middle-class Catalan family that embraces Franco and Spanish Nationalism. Its potent drama plays out through Goytisolo's crisp, forceful presentation of youth, humor, optimism, rebellion, violence, sexual awakening, indulgence, punishment, and the realization of one's artistic vocation. Alternately modern and historical, Antagony displays intelligent realism, emotional gravity, profane beauty, brute vulgarity, sweeping rhetorical scope, and seamless transitions through long, streaming passages of narrative and introspection.

About the Author

Luis Goytisolo is a Spanish writer, born in 1935. He is widely known for his tetralogy Antagonia, which was published between 1973 and 1981. He is a member of the Real Academia Espanola and has won many awards and distinctions in his native Spain.

Brendan Riley has translated a variety of genres including short fiction, novels, literary studies, religious reflections, poetry, and travel writing. His translations include Carlos Fuentes (The Great Latin American Novel); Luis Goytisolo (Antagony), Alvaro Enrigue (Hypothermia); Juan Filloy (Caterva); and Carmen Grau (Sunrise in Southeast Asia).

Reviews

Winner of the 2023 Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award

"The story is long but engaging as the novel morphs into a memorial to a humanist civilization under siege, its icons not just Joyce, but also other modernists such as Proust and Hermann Broch. It holds up just fine in such company." -Kirkus Reviews

Awards
Winner of Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award 2023.



Book Information
ISBN 9781628973983
Author Luis Goytisolo
Format Paperback
Page Count 900
Imprint Dalkey Archive Press
Publisher Dalkey Archive Press