Trilogía Álvaro Mendiola

Series · 3 books · 1966-1975

By Juan Goytisolo

Books in series

Marks of Identity

1966

An exile returns to Spain from France to find that he is repelled by the fascism of Franco's Spain and drawn to the world of Muslim culture. In this novel, Juan Goytisolo, one of Spain's most celebrated novelists, speaks for a generation of Spaniards who were only small children during the Spanish Civil War, grew up under a stifling dictatorship, and, in many cases, emigrated in desperation from their dying country. Upon his return, the narrator confronts the most controversial political, religious, social, and sexual issues of our time with ferocious energy and elegant prose. Torn between the Islamic and European worlds around him, he finds both ultimately unsatisfactory. In the end, only displacement survives.

Count Julian

1970

Exiled in Tangiers, cut off from home and country, the narrator of Count Julian rants against the homeland he was forced to leave: Spain. The second novel in Juan Goytisolo's trilogy (including Marks of Identity and Juan the Landless), this story of an exiled Spaniard confronts all of Goytisolo's own worst fears about fascist Spain.

Juan the Landless

1975

Juan Goytisolo focuses on the surreal exploration and rejection of his own roots, Catholic Spain's repression of Muslims, Jews and gays, his ancestors' exploitation of Cuban slaves and his own forging of a language at once poetic, politic and ironic that celebrates the erotic act of writing and and the anarchic joy of being the ultimate outsider. In Juan the Landless the greatest living novelist from Spain defiantly re-invents tradition and the world as a man without a home, without a country, in praise of pariahs.

Author

Juan Goytisolo

Author · 30 books

Desde la trilogía formada por Señas de identidad, Don Julián y Juan sin tierra, que le situó entre los mejores autores de la literatura española contemporánea, la obra narrativa de Juan Goytisolo (Barcelona, 1931) ha derivado en cada nueva singladura hacia territorios inexplorados que cuestionan siempre el género de la ficción. Esta voluntad de ir a contracorriente ha propiciado la gestación de textos tan singulares como Makbara (1980), 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) o El exiliado de aquí y allá (2008). No obstante, Juan Goytisolo no destaca sólo como autor de ficción, sino que también cultiva con maestría el género del ensayo, con obras como Contra las sagradas formas (2007) o Genet en el Raval (2009). En 2014 se le ha otorgado el Premio Cervantes de las Letras. ==== Juan Goytisolo Gay was born in Barcelona at 1931. A vocal opponent of Franco, he left Spain for France in 1956. In Paris, he worked as a consultant for the publisher Gallimard while he was also working on his own oeuvre. There he met his future wife, Monique Langue, and Jean Genet, who influenced his vision of literature. While living in Paris, he started the most experimental side of his books. Mixing poetry with painting and fiction with non-fiction, he explored the possibilities of language, leaving behind the social commentary of his first novels. "Marks of Identity" was the start, but then he turned even more radical with "Count Julian" and "Juan the Landless", where he rejected definitely, because of a lack of identification, his Spanish identity in favor of adopting a "cervantina" nationality. In the 1970s he visited Marrakech often. In 1981 he bought a house there. In 1996, after the death of his wife, he moved there and adopted Morocco as his main residence. He is widely considered one of the most important Spanish authors of his time. His brothers, José Agustín Goytisolo and Luis Goytisolo, are also writers. In 2008 he won Spain's Premio Nacional de las Letras and in 2014 the Cervantes Prize. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan\_Goy...