A4, 40 pages, Risograph printing, Fasten bound, Softcover, Edition of 40, 2022

One way to inhabit your reading is to write it down by hand, l suppose. In homage to samizdat practices, l started handwriting this artist book edition of ‘Quarantine’ by Juan Goytisolo in 2020. I was also challenged by the protagonist who says he handwrote the book over the course of one night as it was dictated to him by an angel…

Juan Goytisolo, whose early works were banned in Spain until after Franco’s death, wrote ‘Quarantine’ (originally ‘La cuarantena’, tr. by Peter Bush) in 1994 while living in exile in Paris. The short novella has forty chapters, each corresponding to the forty days in Islamic lore that account for the time spent between death and eternity. While the novel is set up as a narrative of this journey, it reflects on writing itself as a quarantine, while also reflecting on the Gulf War on television.

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