Sunday, June 11, 2017

Juan Goytisolo / Man Booker International prize 2011


Juan Goytisolo: 'now widely recognised as Spain’s greatest living writer'

Juan Goytisolo


Man Booker International prize 2011


Justin Cartwright
Wednesday 30 March 2011 12.55 BST

Justin Cartwright: 'Goytisolo's task, as he sees it, has been to reinvigorate Spanish fiction by adulterating, or "poisoning", it with the range of influences that he has brought to bear on all that he regards as ossified and conservative'

Juan Goytisolo was born in Barcelona in 1931. From his earliest days, his life has been marked by the effects of the Spanish Civil War; his mother was killed in a Francoist air-raid in 1938 and his father was imprisoned.
Although now widely recognised as Spain's greatest living writer, he claims to detest Spanish life and society and lives in Marrakesh, from where he writes scathing pieces about his homeland. Bisexual, he was married to the novelist Monique Lange, with whom he lived in France. When she died in 1996 he moved to Morocco, and is a great admirer and scholar of Arab and Mahgrebi life and culture. For many years he had a difficult relationship with Spain, but he is now fully accepted, as his presentation with Spain's National Prize for Literature in 2009 shows.

Goytisolo's task, as he sees it, has been to reinvigorate Spanish fiction by adulterating, or "poisoning", it with the range of influences that he has brought to bear on all that he regards as ossified and conservative. His luminous 2000 novel, The Garden of Secrets, is based loosely on the life of one Eusebio, a poet, and is a perfect example of how Goytisolo subverts Spanish conservatism, from racial attitudes to sexual repression, in every possible way. Count Julian (1974) is a deliberate attempt to take up the cause of the historical character of that name, in Spanish eyes a notorious traitor who opened the country to Islamic invasion. In his own words, Goytisolo imagines "the destruction of Spanish mythology, its Catholicism and nationalism, in a literary attack on traditional Spain."
His writing, as his friend Carlos Fuentes says, is about "exiles condemned to live with the language of their oppressions, digest it, expel it, trample on it, and then resign themselves ... "
He is one of the major European writers alive today.

THE GUARDIAN



DE OTROS MUNDOS
Juan Goytisolo / 'Je est un autre'
Juan Goytisolo / Paisaje después de las batallas
Muere el escritor Juan Goytisolo a los 86 años en Marrakech
Muere Juan Goytisolo, el escritor disidente
Juan Goytisolo según Orhan Pamuk
Juan Goytisolo y Monique Lange / Los amores difíciles
París, la otra patria de Jean Goytisolo
Juan Goytisolo estuvo y estará / Los momentos infernales del franquismo
Juan Goytisolo / Claves de un heterodoxo
Juan Goytisolo / Coto vedado / La sinceridad de un libro
Goytisolo en su amargo final

DRAGON
Juan Goytisolo  / Scourge of the new Spain 
Juan Goytisolo / Man Booker International prize 2011



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