"No one can deny that Juan Goytisolo is the main Spanish novelist on active service."--Carlos Fuentes

"Juan Goytisolo is one of the most rigorous and original contemporary writers."--Mario Vargas Llosa

"One of the most brilliant of living writers."--"Los Angeles Times"

Seemingly an intimate travel book, Juan Goytisolo's short narrative grimly revisits Almeria under Franco's rule. His earlier visits allow him to compare his "chosen homeland" to a past time and a fundamentally unchanged zone, neglected by Franco and Spain itself. At once, then, "Nijar Country" doubles time and space, the first of its many such doublings.

Walls graffitied FRANCO, FRANCO, FRANCO preside over destitution, hopeless hopes, and labored lives ended before death, so inhabitants dream of escaping, some having returned only to recall cities regretfully. One boy, pointedly named Juan, implores the narrator (our Juan?) to take him away. The boy may embody a past Juan of whom the present man is avatar--and what about the other Juans in the book?

Readers of Goytisolo's later books, such as "Juan the Landless," may be surprised by "Nijar Country"'s precociously complex counterpoint, so deftly manipulated as to possibly escape detection.

Goytisolo has written other "travelogs," each accomplishing multiple purposes. Here his vocabulary and grammar sound Nijar's soulful culture. Peter Bush's flexible translation admirably hurdles such potential obstacles of diction and expression.