Luis Goytisolo

Luis Goytisolo Gay (born 17 March 1935) is a Spanish writer. He is best known for his tetralogy Antagonía, which was published between 1973 and 1981. Goytisolo is a member of the Real Academia Española.

Goytisolo was born on 17 March 1935 in Barcelona. He is the younger brother to José Agustín Goytisolo and Juan Goytisolo. He started studying law in 1953 but quit shortly afterwards to dedicate himself to literature and a political struggle against Francoist Spain.

In 1963 he was locked up for four months in the Carabanchel Prison for being a supporter of the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia/Communist Party of Spain. Part of this period he spend in isolation. During his time in prison he started to write his novel Antagonía. He used used pieces of toilet paper to write upon.

His tetralogy Antagonía is considered by El Mundo to be one of the best novels of the 20th century. In 2012 it was published in a single book. The first English translation of Antagonía (Antagony) will be published by Dalkey Archive Press in four volumes, the first coming out in 2017.

In March 2015 Goytisolo donated 57 boxes of his personal archives to the Biblioteca Nacional de España.

In 1993 Goytisolo won the Premio Nacional de Narrativa for his book Estatua con palomas.

Goytisolo was elected to seat C of the Real Academia Española on 24 March 1994, he took up his seat on 29 January 1995. He took over the seat from Luis Rosales. In 2015 Goytisolo criticized the Spanish government for budgets cuts to the Academia, citing the Academia as fundamental to the Spanish language community worldwide.

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