John Goytisolo He left us very recently, but we must admit that he was the total writer, he was always recognized that way while still alive. And it is that thanks to his vital background, not always fortunate but always critical and committed, he cultivated a versatile, chameleonic writing.
It is not easy for a writer settled in realism for many years, and filled there with all the congratulations of readers and critics, to give a twist to his creation to adapt to a modern, synthetic and fresh novel that in his hands he was capable of weaving in perfect chronology to be undone in a sudden flash back. A modern novel of varied characters and different approaches such as irony or parody, humor and melancholy, always in a cosmos of characters very his own, of depth and wisdom.
Select the three best novels from such an award-winning author as don juan goytisolo It may sound like heresy, but in the end, beyond the undoubted mastery, there is always personal taste, the discovery of the nuances of a work that best suit one.
Recommended books by Juan Goytisolo
Duel in paradise
Justice is to recognize the origin of genius. This, his second novel emerges for me among everything written for its originality. Realism, yes, but in a surprising approach, where children find a new world for themselves. The war leaves their town empty and… what will they do?
After the withdrawal of the republican troops, a group of children is owner of a small village in the Catalan Pyrenees. For the children, this situation becomes, with the town empty and all the ground free for their misdeeds, a formidable opportunity to unleash their instincts. If until then they have witnessed the cruelty of war, now they will be able to star in a game that, dominated by brutality and savagery, resembles it even in the smallest details.
Despite the crude and objective presentation of the facts, Juan Goytisolo carries out a magical transmutation of reality. Thus, everything that is palpable or identifiable in this novel, socially, geographically or historically, is diluted behind a very fine poetic mist and Duel in Paradise is transformed from a crude story of the civil war into a metaphor of universal scope. .
Steeped in rare poetry, Duel in Paradise is a disturbing meditation on childhood, the origin of the darkest motivations of the human condition.
The virtues of the solitary bird
A short but deep composition. A kind of delirium of literary love, a magnificent and lucid story that delves into the field of the most passionate love.
Of the passions and the drives that drive them, of madness and surrender to the unbridled heart. Of the most delicious sex and unreason. In the inner cellar of my beloved I drank. With these verses from San Juan de la Cruz, one of the most daring novels of the Spanish narrative opens.
The Virtues of the Solitary Bird, published in 1988, links, under an apocalyptic scenario, the mystique of Saint John of the Cross from the spiritual Canticle - the figure of the solitary bird as a symbol of the contemplative soul - with the Sufi tradition.
Eroticism, poetry, mysticism and innovation in a small work to enjoy with a glass of wine and someone to transfer that imaginary that connects with the freest part of our soul.
The site of the sites
Winter images of the besieged city: stuck to a low wall, the fragile silhouette of a woman kneels through the field of view of snipers.
Delayed vision of a death due to the sudden annihilation of the beholder: his room has been hit by a mortar. The commander of the International Interposition Force, forewarned, goes to the scene to discover the disappearance of the body.
Only a booklet of poems and several stories found in a suitcase can put you on a good track. But his reading leads him astray in a "garden of forking texts." Double enigma: the hidden body and the anonymous writings of different authorship.
The space of the novel is the space of doubt: the ephemeral but incessant rupture of the siege of concealments and lies of official history. All certainty eventually leads to uncertainty.
Perhaps the dissemination of apocryphal documents, glosses, reports, stories, letters, poems, is the only way for the victims to escape the death trap to which international indifference condemns them.
The site of the sites is thus a metaphor for all sieges: starting from the reality of situations and scenes of obsessive violence and desolation, it gradually leads the reader through stories that are woven and unwound to that unique point of truth. of the most extreme and quintessential fiction.
