Juan Goytisolo receive morning Cervantes – The Universal

yanet.aguilar@eluniversal.com.mx
 

 On September 9, 2009, in a digital conversation that Juan Goytisolo had with readers of Spanish newspaper El Pais, when asked at what point he realized that his life would be closely linked to the world of literature, he referred to what other times repeated: “I think I was scheduled to write. I started at 7 or 8 years and it never occurred to me otherwise. Among the 14 or 15 years writing novels about three summer was the best period of my life. Was genetically programmed to do, I think. ”
 

 

 Juan Goytisolo Gay, born in Barcelona, ​​Spain, on January 5, 1931, will receive tomorrow in a ceremony, the Cervantes Prize for Literature 2014; does it become one of the most remarkable essayist and contemporary Spanish intellectuals, and considered the most important narrator of the mid-century generation.
 

 

 John is a writer in a family of writers, his two brothers, Luis and Jose Agustin, the latter now deceased, have gone their own ways. His work includes novels, collections of short stories and travel essays and poetry; his life was that of a rebellious intellectual to Francoism.
 

 

 In 1938, when he was only seven years old, his mother died in a bombing in Barcelona by national aviation. Then came the self-exile led him to Marrakech and Paris, where he began work as a literary adviser Gallimard, which came as the lyrics and took him away from his studies in law in 1956.
 

 

 The author of The Circus, Sleight of hand and Hallmarks, which are considered his most important works, has taught literature; between 1969 and 1975 was in the universities of California, Boston and New York. It is a versatile author, cultivate novels, short stories, poetry and essays, but also travel writing, memoirs and reportage; He is a regular contributor to El Pais newspaper for which he has been a correspondent in the war in Chechnya and Bosnia.
 

 

 A Juan Goytisolo is interested in everything, literary, cultural, social, economic and political life of Spain, Grand Marrakech and the world, which has become a critic of Western civilization, looking, say the researchers, “since peripheral optical “. Since 1996, with the death of his wife, Monique Lange, John has taken up residence in Marrakech.
 

 

 It is certainly one of the most influential Spanish intellectuals abroad; a writer in the old way. When in 2009, during digital conversation asked his opinion about the harm of new technologies, intellectual replied: “I live outside all modern technology, keep writing by hand. If you tell me that I was hung in the twentieth century say that I was hanging in the nineteenth century, because in the twentieth century most people already had typewriter … I have always handwritten. There has always been someone who wrote me a machine he wrote and now that I scanned what I write. It is my innate inability to practical things, not a compliment. ”
 

 

  The legacy of his work. Goytisolo’s early novels, like Sleight of hand (1954) and Duel in Paradise (1955), enroll in the social realism of the 50s of XX century. Also in his trilogy The Circus (1947), Events (1958) and The Hangover (1958) is alive its anti-bourgeois thought. But the stage where it leaves the realism then come and write Hallmarks (1966), an example of the new techniques of the modern novel; will continue to work as a claim of Count Julian (1970), his novel about exile, and John landless (1975), which concludes with a page in Arabic to reveal his break, part of the culture and history of your country ; but also where exploration Arab civilization begins with pieces such as Ottoman Istanbul (1989) and Makbara (1979).
 

 

 Goytisolo has continued writing enough; He has done work with doses of humor and irony; has made transparent part of his life in Coto barred autobiography (1985); write newspaper articles and has received several awards, including the Essay and Poetry Octavio Paz in 2002 and the Prize of Latin American Literature and the Caribbean Juan Rulfo in 2004. Tomorrow, the writer who in his honor library Instituto Cervantes of Tangier leads his name since 2007, will be awarded the Cervantes Prize for Literature.