Juan Goytisolo

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Juan Goytisolo is a Spanish poet and novelist. He has rejected his home country of Spain, which he sees as over decadent and sexually repressed. He currently lives in voluntary exile in Marrakesh.

Juan Goytisolo was born in Barcelona in 1931. His father was imprisoned by the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War while his Catalan mother was killed in the first Francoist air raid in 1938.

For decades, my name was more popular in police stations than bookshops, and I do not mean to compliment the literary awareness of Spanish policemen.[1]
-- Juan Goytisolo

After law studies, he published his first novel, The Young Assassins, in 1954. His deep opposition to Franco led him into exile in Paris in 1956, where he worked as a reader for Gallimard. Breaking with the realism of his earlier novels, he published Marks of Identity (1966), Count Julian (1970), and Juan the Landless (1975). Like all his works, they were banned in Spain until Franco's death.

Juan Goytisolo was married to the publisher, novelist and screenwriter Monique Lange,a cousin of novelists Marcel Proust, Emmanuel Berl and the philosopher Henri Bergson. Monique Lange died in 1996. After her death, he is noted as saying their once shared Paris apartment felt like a tomb. He then moved to Marrakesh where he has lived since 1997.

Contents

[edit] His work

Fiction:

  • Juegos de manos (1954).
  • Duelo en el Paraíso (1955).
  • El circo (1957). Part of the trilogy El mañana efímero.
  • Fiestas (1958). Part of the trilogy El mañana efímero.
  • La resaca (1958). Part of the trilogy El mañana efímero.
  • Para vivir aquí (1960). Short stories.
  • La isla (1961).
  • La Chanca (1962).
  • Fin de Fiesta. Tentativas de interpretación de una historia amorosa (1962). Stories.
  • Señas de identidad (1966). Álvaro Mendiola trilogy.
  • Reivindicación del conde don Julián (1970). Álvaro Mendiola trilogy.
  • Juan sin Tierra (1975). Álvaro Mendiola trilogy.
  • Makbara (1980).
  • Paisajes después de la batalla (1985).
  • Las virtudes del pájaro solitario (1988).
  • La cuarentena (1991).
  • La saga de los Marx (1993).
  • El sitio de los sitios (1995).
  • Las semanas del jardín (1997).
  • Carajicomedia (2000).
  • Telón de boca (2003).
  • Jorge Goytisolo" (2006).

Essays:

  • Problemas de la novela (1959). Literature.
  • Furgón de cola (1967).
  • España y los españoles (1979). History and politics.
  • Crónicas sarracinas (1982).
  • El bosque de las letras (1995). Literature.
  • Disidencias (1996). Literatura.
  • De la Ceca a la Meca. Aproximaciones al mundo islámico (1997).
  • Cogitus interruptus (1999).
  • El peaje de la vida (2000). With Sami Naïr.
  • El Lucernario: la pasión crítica de Manuel Azaña (2004).

Others:

  • Campos de Níjar (1954). Travels, journalism.
  • Pueblo en marcha. Tierras de Manzanillo. Instantáneas de un viaje a Cuba (1962). Travels, journalism.
  • Obra inglesa de Blanco White (1972). Editor.
  • Coto vedado (1985). Memoir.
  • En los reinos de taifa (1986). Memoir.
  • Alquibla (1988). TV script for TVE.
  • Estambul otomano (1989). Travels.
  • Aproximaciones a Gaudí en Capadocia (1990). Travels.
  • Cuaderno de Sarajevo (1993). Travels, journalism.
  • Argelia en el vendaval (1994). Travels, journalism.
  • Paisajes de guerra con Chechenia al fondo (1996). Travels, journalism.
  • Lectura del espacio en Xemaá-El-Fná (1997). Illustrated by Hans Werner Geerdts.
  • El universo imaginario (1997).
  • Diálogo sobre la desmemoria, los tabúes y el olvido (2000). Conversation with Günter Grass.
  • Paisajes de guerra: Sarajevo, Argelia, Palestina, Chechenia (2001).
  • Pájaro que ensucia su propio nido (2001). Articles.
  • Memorias (2002).
  • España y sus Ejidos (2003).

[edit] Literary Prizes

1985: Premio Europalia. 1993: Premio Nelly Sachs. 2002: Premio Octavio Paz de Literatura. 2004: Premio Juan Rulfo.


[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Quoted in Eberstadt, cited above.