Juan the Landless » (Revised)

Born in 1931, Juan Goytisolo has lived a life of political and cultural exile. A bitter opponent of the Franco regime, his early novels, including Marks of Identity, were banned in Spain. Since leaving Spain, he has lived mostly in France and Morocco. He is the author of a number of novels, many of which, including The Young Assassins, Count Julian, Makbara, The Marx Family Saga, and Quarantine, have been translated into English.

Peter Bush has translated Goytisolo's memoirs and his novel Quarantine, as well as novels by Juan Carlos Onetti, Antonio Muñoz Molina, and other prominent Spanish writers.

Juan Goytisolo has radically revised his masterpiece Juan the Landless for this new translation by renowned translator Peter Bush. Marking a turning point in Goytisolo's work from outright hostility for his homeland towards a growing appreciation and celebration of the many Muslim contributions to western culture, Juan the Landless is a desperate, sympathetic, erotic, and anarchic attempt by the greatest living novelist from Spain to reconcile himself to seeing the world as a man without a home, without a country.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Originally published in 1975, Juan the Landless is usually referred to as the third book of Goytisolo's so-called Álvaro Mendiola trilogy which includes Marks of Identity (1966), and Count Julian (1970). (Some scholars debate whether it should be called a trilogy at all.) The books needn't be read sequentially, but the first sets the stage for the events in the succeeding volumes by unveiling the contradictory ramifications of the Spanish Civil War, and the Franco dictatorship, for people of varying social castes.