Search

The inability to come to terms with traumatic experiences is felt most acutely by the individual, but is also a social phenomenon, perpetuated by the disjunction of an 'official history' and that experienced locally by the individual. In light of the recuperation of Spanish Civil War histories and the need to address the unspoken past, this article focuses on the recent work of Juan Goytisolo, a writer renowned for blurring the autobiographical, the political and the literary. After brief reference to Goytisolo's earlier work, the essay examines three of his more recent novels, La cuarentena (1991), El sitio de los sitios (1995) and Las semanas del jardín (1997), identifying the personal and communal ties to the traumatic past that are realized in Goytisolo's work and revealing the processes by which Goytisolo consciously and unconsciously evokes his past while engaging his readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biography of Spanish author Juan Goytisolo is presented. Born in Spain in 1931, he wrote nineteen novels, two volumes of autobiography, travelogues, short stories and essays about literature and culture. His work exemplifies the study of Jacques Derrida about Friedrich Nietzsche's autobiography "Ecce homo." Furthermore, his autobiographical and fictional works manifest the Derridean autobiographical technique of self-reflection. He was self-exiled since 1956.