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Cinema Eden: Essays from the Muslim Mediterranean
To many, Juan Goytisolo is Spain's greatest living novelist and her sternest critic. An exile from his native land for over forty years (he left Madrid in 1957 to escape Franco's regime), he has mercilessly sought to overturn Spain's Catholic homogeneity by remembering the cultural influence of her medieval and Jewish populations. Few European writers know the Islamic shores of the Mediterranean as intimately as he does. In these essays about Morocco, Turkey, and Egypt, Goytisolo celebrates a world where ritual matters and tradition is alive, where saints live, story-tellers weave their enchantments nightly, and where honor and dignity preserve the importance of the individual. Goytisolo is to Spanish writing what Almodovar is to Spanish cinema. These essays are a fine reading of the vast, heterogeneous mosaic of Islam against the everyday truculent images of the mass media. "A deliciously pretentious aesthete, Goytisolo unashamedly romanticizes popular Islamic life in beguiling, immensely readable, poetic prose."-Publishers Weekly
144 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2004
About the author
Juan Goytisolo
178 books166 followersDesde la trilogía formada por Señas de identidad, Don Julián y Juan sin tierra, que le situó entre los mejores autores de la literatura española contemporánea, la obra narrativa de Juan Goytisolo (Barcelona, 1931) ha derivado en cada nueva singladura hacia territorios inexplorados que cuestionan siempre el género de la ficción. Esta voluntad de ir a contracorriente ha propiciado la gestación de textos tan singulares como Makbara (1980), Las virtudes del pájaro solitario (1988), La cuarentena (1991), La saga de los Marx (1993), El sitio de los sitios (1995), Las semanas del jardín (1997), Carajicomedia (2000), Telón de boca (2003) o El exiliado de aquí y allá (2008).
No obstante, Juan Goytisolo no destaca sólo como autor de ficción, sino que también cultiva con maestría el género del ensayo, con obras como Contra las sagradas formas (2007) o Genet en el Raval (2009). En 2014 se le ha otorgado el Premio Cervantes de las Letras.
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Juan Goytisolo Gay was born in Barcelona at 1931. A vocal opponent of Franco, he left Spain for France in 1956.
In Paris, he worked as a consultant for the publisher Gallimard while he was also working on his own oeuvre. There he met his future wife, Monique Langue, and Jean Genet, who influenced his vision of literature. While living in Paris, he started the most experimental side of his books. Mixing poetry with painting and fiction with non-fiction, he explored the possibilities of language, leaving behind the social commentary of his first novels. "Marks of Identity" was the start, but then he turned even more radical with "Count Julian" and "Juan the Landless", where he rejected definitely, because of a lack of identification, his Spanish identity in favor of adopting a "cervantina" nationality.
In the 1970s he visited Marrakech often. In 1981 he bought a house there. In 1996, after the death of his wife, he moved there and adopted Morocco as his main residence.
He is widely considered one of the most important Spanish authors of his time. His brothers, José Agustín Goytisolo and Luis Goytisolo, are also writers. In 2008 he won Spain's Premio Nacional de las Letras and in 2014 the Cervantes Prize.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Goy...
No obstante, Juan Goytisolo no destaca sólo como autor de ficción, sino que también cultiva con maestría el género del ensayo, con obras como Contra las sagradas formas (2007) o Genet en el Raval (2009). En 2014 se le ha otorgado el Premio Cervantes de las Letras.
========
Juan Goytisolo Gay was born in Barcelona at 1931. A vocal opponent of Franco, he left Spain for France in 1956.
In Paris, he worked as a consultant for the publisher Gallimard while he was also working on his own oeuvre. There he met his future wife, Monique Langue, and Jean Genet, who influenced his vision of literature. While living in Paris, he started the most experimental side of his books. Mixing poetry with painting and fiction with non-fiction, he explored the possibilities of language, leaving behind the social commentary of his first novels. "Marks of Identity" was the start, but then he turned even more radical with "Count Julian" and "Juan the Landless", where he rejected definitely, because of a lack of identification, his Spanish identity in favor of adopting a "cervantina" nationality.
In the 1970s he visited Marrakech often. In 1981 he bought a house there. In 1996, after the death of his wife, he moved there and adopted Morocco as his main residence.
He is widely considered one of the most important Spanish authors of his time. His brothers, José Agustín Goytisolo and Luis Goytisolo, are also writers. In 2008 he won Spain's Premio Nacional de las Letras and in 2014 the Cervantes Prize.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Goy...
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 29, 2025
Cinema Eden – Essays from the Muslim Mediterranean by Juan Goytisolo
I’d long wanted to read Goytisolo and this translation by Peter Bush was the perfect book to take on a weekend break to London.
Set across Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia, the book is part memoir, part invention and is a good insight into how the landscapes of each can effect the memory, mind and tranquillity of good writing. The influential poet and philosopher Ibn Arabi, from Murcia and spent time in Andalusia is one of the characters Goytisolo includes but the poetic descriptions bring colour and flower the narrative.
My favourite essay by far was Gaudi in Capodoccia. Goytisolo writes, “like Cervantes and Goya, Gaudi sought out the real Spain, which he found in the hidden stata of the meaty mudejar miscegenation” which adds alternative visions to the economic, social and political life of the Muslims.
I plan to look up the battle in Edirne, the Museum of Classical Literature in Istanbul, the author Edward Jarrett and the play The Barber of Lavapies and as a learning tool, that is what I’ll take from this book by Goytisolo, along with this beautiful description near the end.
“The spectacle of twilight in Khalifa offers an impressive array of colourful, violent contrasts. Weak and bloodless, the sun appears to be bled white, behind the reddened silhouettes of minarets and mosque domes. The atmosphere is soaked in a strange luminosity.
I’d long wanted to read Goytisolo and this translation by Peter Bush was the perfect book to take on a weekend break to London.
Set across Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia, the book is part memoir, part invention and is a good insight into how the landscapes of each can effect the memory, mind and tranquillity of good writing. The influential poet and philosopher Ibn Arabi, from Murcia and spent time in Andalusia is one of the characters Goytisolo includes but the poetic descriptions bring colour and flower the narrative.
My favourite essay by far was Gaudi in Capodoccia. Goytisolo writes, “like Cervantes and Goya, Gaudi sought out the real Spain, which he found in the hidden stata of the meaty mudejar miscegenation” which adds alternative visions to the economic, social and political life of the Muslims.
I plan to look up the battle in Edirne, the Museum of Classical Literature in Istanbul, the author Edward Jarrett and the play The Barber of Lavapies and as a learning tool, that is what I’ll take from this book by Goytisolo, along with this beautiful description near the end.
“The spectacle of twilight in Khalifa offers an impressive array of colourful, violent contrasts. Weak and bloodless, the sun appears to be bled white, behind the reddened silhouettes of minarets and mosque domes. The atmosphere is soaked in a strange luminosity.
January 17, 2016
Delicious phrases, a giant vocabulary and descriptions so vivid you can almost taste them, this short collection of essays brings Morocco, Turkey and Egypt vividly to life.
From memories of the eponymous cinema itself, life and gossip in Marrakesh’s main square, communing with the spirit of Antoni Gaudi in Cappadocia, observations on life in Cairo’s City of the Dead and more, this collection is like breathing in the heady smells from a spice market.
Inhale deeply and escape.
From memories of the eponymous cinema itself, life and gossip in Marrakesh’s main square, communing with the spirit of Antoni Gaudi in Cappadocia, observations on life in Cairo’s City of the Dead and more, this collection is like breathing in the heady smells from a spice market.
Inhale deeply and escape.
January 13, 2014
"It's as if Paul Bowles had decided to write for the New York Times: fifty camels practicing safe sex."
Full review at:
http://theorangepress.com/woid/woid20...
Full review at:
http://theorangepress.com/woid/woid20...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews