Juan Goytisolo has been hailed as one of the finest writers currently working in the Spanish language. He has produced a series of passionately iconoclastic and obliquely autobiographical novels, charting the effects of civil war and fascist dictatorship upon his native Spain. In The Garden of Secrets, a Circle of 28 readers, each one represented by a letter of the Arabic alphabet, gather in a garden to tell the story of Eusebio, a dissident poet arrested by the Falange in the early years of the Spanish Civil War. Diagnosed as a victim of "collectivist social utopias" exacerbated by "feminoid urges", the poet is subjected to a brutal programme of drugs, re-indoctrination and electric shock treatment. The narrative which follows is disorientating, nightmarish and fragmentarily beautiful. At the heart of the narrative, a fabric that constantly unravels itself with each successive storyteller, is the enigma of the poet himself. Who is Eusebio? The Islamic convert and ascetic divine of Marrakesh, the bloated black marketeer of Tangiers or a sham aristocrat with a passion for Mary Pickford and a penchant for female impersonation? These myriad identities, constructed by the various narrators (including a brilliant parody of the Arabist scholar), shroud the subject in mystery whilst illuminating the real object of Goytisolo's interest: the process of storytelling itself. After all, the author is yet another "fictitious character, a mere paper being like the one you're laboriously constructing". The Garden of Secrets is a brilliant, mesmerising novel. --Jerry Brotton

A playful exploration of the possibilities of fiction, 23 Nov 2000
A group of readers gather to reconstruct the life of a Spanish poet, Eusebio, who disappeared at the outbreak of the Civil War. Each proposes his or her part of the story in a short chapter. Did he escape with his male lover to become a Muslim mystic? Was he "re-educated" by fascist psychologists to become a loyal follower of Franco? It is up to the reader to choose from these (and other) conflicting versions, to fill in the gaps, and generally rejoice in this playful celebration of the art of narrative.

A playful exploration of the possibilities of fiction, 23 Nov 2000
A group of readers gather to reconstruct the life of a Spanish poet, Eusebio, who disappeared at the outbreak of the Civil War. Each proposes his or her part of the story in a short chapter. Did he escape with his male lover to become a Muslim mystic? Was he "re-educated" by fascist psychologists to become a loyal follower of Franco? It is up to the reader to choose from these (and other) conflicting versions, to fill in the gaps, and generally rejoice in this playful celebration of the art of narrative.

Punctuation, 06 Apr 2006
The author of this book must have an incredible lung capacity. He dosen't seem to usefull stops at all (though perhaps this is a feature of the translation from spanish to english). The first sentence runs for three pages. These convoluted sentences make the writting extreamly hard to follow.

A strange complex masterpiece, 25 May 2003
This novel "Señas de Identidad" (Signs of Identity) should be read in Spanish. It frequently has an accusatory tone, & for example, switches between "registers" of prose characteristic of the fascist era from 1936 thru 1974 such as the turgid police reports. It is Alvaro's lone-voice odyssey through a dysfunctional post-war Spain in search of the stratified remnants of his childhood memories or "signs" of his past, prior to his years of exile in France. The juxtaposing of past & present is complex, with a heavy sense of menace & oppression. The fragmentation in the story-line is symbolic of the fragmentation of the Spanish psyche under the Fascist regime...when only the symbols of the conquerors have prevailed.

Difficult but thoroughly rewarding read, 28 May 2002
Juan Goytisolo ponders many of the same questions as do we all: Who am I? How did I get here? What made me the way I am? Goytisolo however articulates these uncertainties with great talent and style. As the protagonist Alvaro searches for his 'marks of identity', what made him the way he is and who he is, the reader is taken on a postmodern voyage, involving ingenious juxtapositions of fiction with fact. Particularly effective is the reading of a town's plan of celebrations, interjected with dialogue from scenes of police oppression. As Alvaro picks apart his constructed identity the text fragments also, making the narrative a little difficult to follow at times but by the completion of the book the reader has a sense of coherence, if not well-deserved accomplishment.