Interviews with Spanish Writers

A rewarding, lively set of interviews with 24 veterans and newcomers to Spanish literature, this volume should serve as a handy reader's guide to Spain's current literary revival. Juan Goytisolo, sometimes called the Spanish James Joyce, discusses his affinity for the organic literary forms of pre-Renaissance Spain. Exiled playwright Fernando Arrabal, enfant terrible of French avant-garde theater, calls himself ``a religious writer . . . a medieval man.'' Detective novelist Eduardo Mendoza suggests that the so-called new genres of crime fiction and the historical novel are modern adaptations of the picaresque. Novelist-journalist Rosa Montero urges women writers to ``relearn to let fantasy be set free.'' Editor Gazarian Gautier is a professor of Spanish literature at St. John's University in New York. (Apr.)