2009 Nobel Prize candidate holds lecture at Instituto Cervantes
MANILA, Philippines - Instituto Cervantes de Manila, in partnership with the Spanish Embassy to the Philippines, presents Constelaciones y Cosmogonías, a lecture by Spanish writer and 2009 Nobel Prize candidate Luis Goytisolo today, 7 p.m., at Instituto Cervantes’ Salon de Actos, 855 T.M. Kalaw St., Ermita, Manila.
Goytisolo, a renowned Spanish writer and academician, explores his works including Antagonía, which is considered by the bookmakers of Great Britain as one of the best novels of the 20th century.
Born in Barcelona in 1935 during the Spanish civil war, Goytisolo is the youngest son of a family of writers. He started writing at a young age, finishing two novels at age 11. It was then that his uncle Luis noticed his potential and eventually selected his reading material and introduced him his love for American literature.
In 1957, he published his first stories and the following year he won the Biblioteca Breve Prize awarded by Seix Barral for his first novel Las Afueras/The Outskirts. In 1962, his second novel The Same Words was published but forced him not to reissue because of the dissatisfaction stemming from the serious problems of censorship.
On January 1963, he began the actual drafting of Antagonía, a series of four volumes that he dedicated to his wife. The novel took Goytisolo 17 years to write and is considered to be one the best novels of all time. The tetralogy consists of Recuento (1974); Los Verdes de Mayo hasta el Mar (1976); La Cólera de Aquiles (1977), and Teoría del Conocimiento (1981).
He is also the author of 10 other novels, and other books that include essays, short stories, and experimental fiction. Goytisolo received the Spanish National Prize for Literature for his novel Estatua con palomas (1993), and is a member of the Real Academia Española de Lengua. He regularly contributes editorials to many Spanish newspapers like El Pais and has also been a scriptwriter for a travel program Indico.
Constelaciones y Cosmogonías is presented by Instituto Cervantes, the Embassy of Spain in the Philippines, and AECID.
Entrance is free on a first-come, first- served basis. For information, call 526-1482 or visit http://manila.cervantes.es.
