Luis Goytisolo's novel, 360° Diary, constitutes a reflection on the act of creativity. The novel is in the form of a diary that begins on the author's birthday and concludes one (lunar) year later. Each day of the week is identified with a theme such as the seasons; the broad movements of history; the biological and psychological cycles of all living beings; and time itself. The author of the diary contemplates and acts upon all the various kinds of knowledge that have come together in his person, either through study, experience, or intuition. Just as in his most well-known novel, Antagonía, Goytisolo uses 360° Diary to explore the human condition and the diverse ways in which the individual comes to know and understand, in whatever limited way, the possibilities of human existence. The totality is a comprehensive, 360° view of contemporary life by an artist employing everything he has learned so as to communicate with the reader willing to follow him in his reflections and, ideally, use them as a starting point for his/her own ideas.
About the Author: The Author: Luis Goytisolo, born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1935, began publishing in 1958 with his first novel, Las afueras. He is the author of ten other novels, among them the epic Antagonía, 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 and has also scripted a travel program, Indico, for Spanish television. The Luis Goytisolo Foundation in El Puerto de Santa María hosts an annual international symposium on Hispanic literature and is involved in other projects, including Spanish language education for foreigners.
The Translator: Pamela J. DeWeese is Professor of Spanish Language, Culture and Literature at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. She received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She received her M.A. and her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. DeWeese is the author of Approximations to Luis Goytisolo's 'Antagonía' (Peter Lang, 2000) and of articles and reviews on twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature in Spain, as well as the biography of Luis Goytisolo for the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twentieth-Century Spanish Fiction Writers (2006).