Juan Goytisolo (born January 6, 1931 in Barcelona) is a Spanish poet, essayist, and novelist. He currently lives in a voluntary self-exile in Marrakech.
Background
Juan Goytisolo was born to an aristocratic family. He has claimed that this level of privilege, accompanied by the cruelties of his great-grandfather and the miserliness of his grandfather (discovered through the reading of old family letters and documents), was a major reason for his joining the Communist party in his youth[1]. Two of his brothers José Agustín and Luis are also well known writers. His father was imprisoned by the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War while his mother was killed in the first Francoist air raid in 1938.
Career
After law studies, he published his first novel, The Young Assassins, in 1954. His deep opposition to Generalissimo Francisco Franco led him into exile in Paris in 1956, where he worked as a reader for Gallimard. In the early 1960s, he was a friend of Guy Debord. 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 after Franco's death.
Count Julian (1970, 1971, 1974) takes up, in an act of outspoken defiance, the side of Julian, count of Ceuta, a man traditionally castigated as the ultimate traitor in Spanish history. In Goytisolo's own words, he imagines "the destruction of Spanish mythology, its Catholicism and nationalism, in a literary attack on traditional Spain." He identifies himself "with the great traitor who opened the door to Arab invasion." The narrator in this novel, an exile in North Africa, rages against his beloved Spain, forming an obsessive identification with the fabled Count Julian, dreaming that, in a future invasion, the ethos and myths central to Hispanic identity will be totally destroyed.
Family
Juan Goytisolo was married to the publisher, novelist and screenwriter Monique Lange, a cousin of novelist 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 had become like a tomb. In 1997 he moved to Marrakech, in part due to the acceptance by its culture of his homosexuality.[2]
Works
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. [3]—Juan Goytisolo
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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).
- The Marx Family Saga (1999).
- Carajicomedia (2000).
- State of Siege (2002).
- Telón de boca (2003).
- A Cock-Eyed Comedy (2005).
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 Nair.
- Landscapes of War: From Sarajevo to Chechnya (2000).
- 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).
Literary Prizes
- 1985: Premio Europalia
- 1993: Premio Nelly Sachs
- 2002: Premio Octavio Paz de Literatura
- 2004: Premio Juan Rulfo
- 2008: Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas
References
External links
- (Spanish) Official Page
- Scourge of the New Spain, an article on Goytisolo from The Guardian
- Interview with Goytisolo from the Center for Book Culture
- Juan Goytisolo at the complete review - bibliography, evaluation, and links
- Fernanda Eberstadt, The Anti-Orientalist, The New York Times Magazine article, April 16, 2006
- Juan Goytisolo, Voltaire and Islam, El País, 4 May 2006
