He is a Spanish poet and novelist. He is openly gay and has rejected his home country of Spain, which he sees as over decadent and sexually repressed (see more on wikipedia).
He says: « When the Spanish dictator Franco died 25 years ago, Juan Goytisolo felt liberated. « I discovered that my real, tyrannical father was Franco, » he says, « my mother was killed by his bombs, my family destroyed, and he forced me to become an exile. Everything I created was a result of the civil war », (see id).
Juan Goytisolo was Born on 5 January, 1931, he attended University of Barcelona and University of Madrid, has largely lived in exile since the late 1950s, mainly in Paris and Marrakesh and was visiting professor at the University of California, San Diego (1969), Boston University (1970), McGill (1972), NYU (1973-4). (See on complete review.com).
Juan Goytisolo was married but took male lovers, and fled bourgeois Barcelona for the Islamic world, which inspired him to launch attacks on the intolerance of his native land. Maya Jaggi (in the Guardian) on Spain’s greatest living writer – and its harshest critic.
Juan Goytisolo – Spain
See a spanish BIBLIOGRAFÍA DE JUAN GOYTISOLO onthe Centro Nacional de Informacion y Comunicacion Educativa (not dated).
See an english review of his books on Complete review.com (not dated).
A long Interview with Juan Goytisolo, by Julio Ortega, trans. Joseph Schraibman (Excerpt): … Julio Ortega: I am very interested in another aspect of Count Julian; its close relationship with the new Hispano-American narrative. l would say that Count Julian is the most Spanish novel that you have written, but it is also the most Hispano-American one, because of its diversity of form and of expression which allows you even to gloss Hispano-American oral language in your novel. What importance has the Hispano-American prose fiction had for you?
Juan Goytisolo: Of course, Count Julian is the most Spanish work I have written. And the reason is simple: its content on a purely verbal level consists of the Hispanic literary discourse from its origins to the present. The attempt to vindicate the treason committed by Don Julian is to refute centuries of hostile history through a kind of vandalic aggression against the written word of our chroniclers, poets, and story tellers. The examples of « plagiarism » which are included at the end of the book may resolve for the erudite scholar the problem of « sources. » The real problem, however, is not a problem of sources, but rather of functions which I attribute to those « plagiarisms, » to the rather free use which I make of them. My approach allows me to engage in an intertextual dialogue with authors whom I admire, or to parody or play with the style of those who seem to me not very respectable, etc. All of which leads us to the second part of what you say: my symbolic intellectual nomadic quality does indeed have affinities with the new Hispano American prose fiction, which is much freer in its relationship with the past than is Spanish prose fiction. In fact, it is also freer with the past tradition of other languages and other cultures. In my opinion, the great pioneer of this attitude is Borges. Without him, neither the new Hispano-American novel nor a work like Count Julian would have been possible. (See all on Center for Book Culture).
Drawn for an article (written in March) dealing with the hysterical voices (in frames) against migrants arriving from muslim countries into Europe. Prestigious Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo (who resides in Morocco) has another view. He proposes (the rich Westerners) to help those countries to improve its population standards of living in the first place. Now, there is a problem: if poor peoples start to rise their standards, they will compete for energy resources with the rich; so, what’s the point? On the other hand, the “War on Terror” brings lots of funds (and jobs) to the Defence and Spy industries helping our own economies. The choice is clear, isn’t it? (See on Gloria Mundi).
Inspired by Dante, French intellectualism and brain-teasing wordplay, 74-year-old icon Jean-Luc Godard makes a topical statement on war in « Notre Musique », (see all on offoffoff.com).
His translator Peter Bush, director of the University of East Anglia’s centre for translation studies, believes no other Spanish writer matches his « intellectual reach, constant invention of language and unusual absorption of other cultures – or stands on a par with the best of the Latin American writers, like Márquez and Julio Cortázar. Although he writes novels in an avant-garde, provocative, modernist style, there’s always a political urgency behind them. His keen sense of history comes from his own life », (see id).
In Spain’s first “Pink List” of the 25 most influential male homosexuals published recently in the « El Mundo » newspaper, Juan Goytisolo was considered as twelvth. Here the list:
1. Fernando Grande Marlaska (Judge)
2. Pedro Zerolo (politician)
3. Pedro Almodóvar (cinema director)
4. Miguel Iceta (politician)
5. Jesús Encinar (businessman)
6. Alvaro Pombo (writer)
7. Ruben Fernández)
8. Juan P. Juliá (businessman)
9. Alejandro Amenábar (cinema director)
10. Jorge Javier Vazquez (TV presenter)
11. Josep Maria Flotats (playwright)
12. Juan Goytisolo (writer)
13. David Delfin (designer)
14. Kike Sarasola (businessman and sportsman)
15. Iñigo Lamarca (lawyer)
16. Boris Izaguirre (TV presenter)
17. Eduardo Mendicutti (writer)
18. Gullermo Pérez Villalta (artist)
19. Nacho Duato (dancer)
20. Jesús Vázquez (TV presenter)
21. Jerónimo Saavedra (politician)
22. Jaime Baily (writer)
23. Lluis Pasquall (playwright)
24. Diego M. Bájar (businessman)
25. Miguel Angel López (journalist)
(See more on ‘Living in Peru‘, July 31, 2006).
in spanish:
ESPAÑA Y SUS EJIDOS, José María Ridao, Escritor y diplomático. Presentación del libro en el Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid – Releyendo los textos del libro España y sus Ejidos de Juan Goytisolo he tenido la impresión de que se justifica por dos ideas. La primera porque nos muestra una clara metamorfósis y la segunda porque transluce un profundo desengaño. Esa metamorfósis hace que España pase de ser un país de emigrantes a otro de inmigrantes, y es importante insistir en esos términos y no lanzar retrospectivamente el término « inmigrante » para definir lo que ocurría en la España de los años sesenta y principios de los setenta, pues si lo hacemos, no seremos conscientes de lo que el libro está advirtiendo y poniendo encima de la mesa. Y es que detrás de esos dos términos, « emigrante » e « inmigrante », existe este extraordinario desengaño que mencionaba. Pensábamos que por el hecho de haber sido un país de emigrantes, esa circunstancia nos ayudaría a entender nuestra propia situación como país de inmigrantes. Sin embargo, como demuestra El Ejido, esa localidad que está aludida de algún modo en el título, eso no nos beneficia, sino todo lo contrario. Lo que se va viendo a medida que avanza este libro es que la imagen que hoy poseemos de la inmigración y la que teníamos antes de la inmigración han empezado a convertirse en la cara y cruz de un fenómeno: el movimiento de personas a través de las fronteras. (Read the rest of this long article on Cordel, no. 3-4, Ano 2005-2006).
auf deutsch:
Rassismus, Spanien und die arabische Welt, Krystian Woznicki, 31.01.2006 – Juan Goytisolo, Nomade und Grenzgänger: Wie lange noch wird die Globalisierung primär mit Grenzenlosigkeit in Verbindung gebracht? Mehr als 15 Jahre nach dem Fall der Berliner Mauer wird diese Frage immer drängender. Immer deutlicher zeichnet sich ein gegenläufiger Trend ab zu dem, was man mit dem Fall der Berliner Mauer verbindet. Spätestens seit dem 11. September werden Mauern immer vehementer eingefordert, immer höher gezogen, immer strenger bewacht. Einer der scharfsinnigsten Kritiker dieser Entwicklung ist Juan Goytisolo, ein spanischer Intellektueller, der in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts in erster Linie als Schriftsteller weltberühmt wurde, in letzter Zeit allerdings mehr denn je in politische Debatten eingreift. (Lies weiter auf heise.de).
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