Juan Goytisolo has been one of most contemporary writers with a traditional narrative writing style, one of the most critical and a great dialogist between the European and Islamic cultures. He was brother to poet José Agustín Goytisolo (1928-1999) and to writer and professor Luís Goytisolo (1935).
He was a methodical and quiet man, very self-absorbed, capable of great silence and extraordinary controversy. “Juan Goytisolo died this morning in Marrakech where he lived, after a long illness of ups and downs that finally defeated him close to the Yemaa el Efna square where he consolidated his life’s literary work concerning the diaspora and rage. He was born in Barcelona in 1931. An opponent of Franco, he chose to live in exile in 1956. He embraced social realism until he adopted new literary forms that paved the way towards a cosmopolitan style born of rupture and a constant questioning.”
Goytisolo was born on January 6, 1931 in Barcelona. He was awarded, among others, the Cervantes Award in 2014 and the Nacional de las Letras (National Award of Letters) in 2008. He studied law at the University of Barcelona and after publishing his first two novels was exiled in Paris from 1956 to 1969. After his exile in Paris Goytisolo lived in the USA, where he taught literature at universities in California, Boston and New York from 1969 to 1975. His work encompasses several genres; narrative, reporting, essays, travel literature, stories and even memoirs. For decades he also wrote for “El País” newspaper as war correspondent in Chechnia and Bosnia.
Besides the Cervantes Award and the National Award of Letters, he was given Premio de Literatura Latinoamericana Juan Rulfo in 2004 (Juan Rulfo Latinamerican Literary Award), Award of Arts and Cultures from the Tres Culturas (Three Cultures) Foundation in 2009 and the Octavio Paz in Literature (2002). He also received the International Don Quijote de La Mancha Award (2010), the Mahmud Darwish Award from the Palestinian University in Birzeit (20111 in Ramala) and the Culture Prize, Sustainable Planet and Oceans (2012).
Read more: EL PAIS
More about the author
He started to study Law, but gave it up, travelled, was arrested for political reasons and in 1956 settled in Paris, where he started work as literary adviser to the Gallimard publishing house. Between 1969 and 1975 he taught literature in universities in California, Boston and New York; he continued to lecture throughout his life. He has created an extensive and varied body of work, including essays and fiction. From 1963 until after Franco’s death, his work was banned in Spain by the regime’s censorship. Genres in which he works include reporting, travel books and memoires. He currently has homes in Marrakesh, Paris, the USA and Spain. He has received several international awards, most notably the Premio de Ensayo y Poesía Octavio Paz (2002) and the Premio Juan Rulfo (2004). In 2007, the library of the Cervantes Institute in Tangiers was named after him. He was awarded the Premio Cervantes in 2014.
