Count Julian - Tapa blanda

This wicked, passionate and extremely funny book can be read as Goytisolo's farewell to the priests, generals and sanctimonious moralizers who ruled his native land ... though difficult and allusive, it is worth the effort, since Goytisolo is Spain's greatest modern novelist (John Butt Daily Telegraph)

Juan Goytisolo has spent the past thirty-five years in exile doing to the Spanish novel what Bunuel did to the cinema, Picasso, Miro and Dali to painting and Lorca to the theatre and in poetry (The Times)

Count Julian is the Finnegan's Wake of the south, but shorter, hotter, crosser and a bit more readable (Observer)

Legend has it that Count Julian opened the gates of Spain to the Moorish invaders and introduced eight hundred years of Islamic influence. The narrator dreams of another invasion of his fatherland. Destruction will be total - myths central to the Hispanic psyche will crumble: the myth of the Christian knight always ready to do battle to defend the faith, the myth of the macho male and its inverse the virgin female, and the myth of the heroic Spanish personality forged in the rout of Islam. The hatred of Spain is intense but it is a hatred that recognizes the debt the exile owes to his homeland.