Juan Goytisolo is, in the eyes of many, Spain’s foremost contemporary novelist. He came to prominence as a leading member of the group of radical young intellectuals known as the ‘Generación del medio siglo’, which was the first to contest the prevailing ideology of the Franco regime. This literary generation was the standard-bearer of the type of social realism that characterized the late 1950s and the early 1960s in Spain.¹ Goytisolo himself sums up the characteristics of this group inEl furgón de cola, describing them as non-conformist, Marxist-orientated, agnostic, and, in terms of literary technique, traditionalist (FC, 82). Of...

With the publication ofSeñas de identidadin 1966, Goytisolo turns his back on the explicitly political approach that had characterized his writing in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This change in the concept of commitment was succinctly summed up by the author himself in an interview when he said:

He pasado de un compromiso con una determinada ideología política a un comprometerme a mímismo con mi escritura por una transformación del mundo.¹

The quotation is an important one as it confirms all the vital aspects of his mature writing. Goytisolo’s commitment is primarily to literature, but the ultimate...

Señas de identidadis the inauguration of what Goytisolo himself refers to as his ‘mature period’.¹ It is the first instalment of the Mendiola trilogy and the first fruit of the major existential crisis, the ‘desgarradora labor de autocrítica—política, literaria, personal’ (D, 343), which the author underwent in 1963.

Critics have been quick to stress thatSeñasis a transitional work,² and Goytisolo himself frequently points out that it contains the flaws and imperfections of its author’s search for a new mode of writing. He compares it toTiempo de silencio, ‘una obra aún vacilante, desnivelada y con bastantes...

Reivindicación del conde don Julián, published in 1970, is the second instalment of the Mendiola Trilogy and is certainly a much more fully rounded and accomplished novel thanSeñas de identidad. The transitional phase of the earlier novel has largely been overcome and the author now pursues his new aesthetic with greater confidence and sense of purpose. It is a multifaceted work which can be read in a variety of ways. Goytisolo himself has commented:

Este libro como otras obras de la novelística actual admite y se propone una pluralidad de lecturas; oscila, a la vez, de la poesía a...

Juan sin tierra, published in 1975, is the last instalment of the Mendiola trilogy. In it Goytisolo carries to the extreme the process of rupture with the past, subversion of Spanish and Western values, the assault on literary tradition and search for a freer form of writing.Juan sin tierrashares the same concerns that characterize the trilogy as a whole and sets out to take them to a more profound level, with a view to effecting the definitive stage of the process of destruction. As Goytisolo himself said, ‘conciboJuan sin tierracomo una obra última, el finis terrae...

After the publication ofJuan sin tierrain 1975, it might have been thought that Goytisolo had reached the limit in his process of radical aesthetic revolt. He had sealed the break with Spain and taken the process of dissolving the novel form to its limit, dispensing with narrative plot, the spatio-temporal framework of the novel, the concept of character and finally, in the last few pages, had severed the narrative contract with the reader, announcing ‘our communication has ended’, and, as though to hammer home the point, doing so in Arabic. The narrator of that novel had also claimed...

After publishingMakbarain 1981, Goytisolo published one more novel,Paisajes después de la batalla, in 1982 and then had an autobiographical break, ‘un paréntesis en mi obra narrativa’ as he termed it,¹ in which he produced his two volumes of memoirs,Coto vedadoin 1985 andEn los reinos de taifain 1986. After this he resumed his novelistic career withLas virtudes del pájaro solitarioin 1988. Since then he has produced four more novels,La cuarentenain 1991,La saga de los Marxin 1993,El sitio de los sitiosin 1995 and, most recently,Las semanas...