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Juan Goytisolo Gay
(January 5, 1931 - living) Spain

Juan Goytisolo

Novelist

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Juan GoytisoloOne of Spain's greatest living writers, Juan Goytisolo was born in Barcelona, his mother, Julia Gay, was a Catalan, and his father's family background was Basque. During the Spanish Civil War his family lived in the ountains in Catalonia but Goytisolo's mother was killed during a visit to Barcelona when he was seen years old. His father was a supporter of Franco and was imprisoned by the Republicans for a period. At age of eight Goytisolo was sexually molested by his maternal grand-father.

Juan GoytisoloFollowing an education with Jesuit priests he studied law in Madrid and Barcelona. Goytisolo was bisexual and during the 1950s appears to have had sex both with female prostitutes and with men of his own class. In 1956 he moved to Paris and took a job as a reader for the publishing house Gallimard. In 1959 he supported the Cuban revolution. He met Monique Lange, the woman he married in 1978. Initially they entered a long-term relationship and had affairs. Goytisolo wrote to her in 1965 that he was irrevocably homosexual, which she accepted.

In the early 1960s Goytisolo began to have sexual relations with Arab men whose relation to homosexuality he regarded as more natural than that of the repressed Western world. In 1996 his wife died and Goytisolo went to live in Marrakesh.

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Source: excerpts from: Gabriele Griffin, Who's Who in Lesbian and Gay and Writing, Routledge, London, 2002

His work include:

    Juan Goytisolo
  • Señas de identitad (Marks of Identity, 1966)
  • Reivindicación del conde Don Julian (Count Julian, 1970)
  • Juan sin tierra (John the Landless, 1975)
  • Makbara (1980)
  • Crónicas Sarracinas (Saracen Chronicles, 1982)
  • Coto vedado (Forbidden Territory, 1985)
  • Las virtudes del pájar solitario (The Virtues of the Solitary Bird, 1988)
  • Carajicomedia (Cock-eyed Comedy, 2000)
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