After publishing Makbara in 1981, Goytisolo published one more novel, Paisajes después de la batalla, in 1982 and then had an autobiographical break, ‘un pareétesis en mi obra narrativa’ as he termed it, in which he produced his two volumes of memoirs, Coto vedado in 1985 and En los reinos de taifa in 1986. After this he resumed his novelistic career with Las virtudes del pájaro solitario in 1988. Since then he has produced four more novels, La cuarentena in 1991, La saga de los Marx in 1993, El sitio de los sitios in 1995 and, most recently, Las semanas del jardín in 1997. Some critics have chosen to see a change of direction in Goytisolo's writing and to talk of a new phase. While it is true that his novels do incorporate new elements, these are no more than has always been the case even with the novels of the trilogy. The fundamental concerns remain the same because they are, by this stage, established points of moral and aesthetic principle. Given the amount of writing which Goytisolo has produced since the trilogy and Makbara, which are the principal objects of study here, it would be unfeasible to attempt a detailed study of all of these works. They are too complex to reward anything other than an extended analysis and they merit a study apart. What we can do, however, is to look at the way Goytisolo's writing has developed in the light of what has been said about the earlier novels in order to examine how the novels fit in broadly to the pattern outlined.

Two broad characteristics of the novels in the 1980s and 1990s stand out. They are, on the one hand, a pronounced development of the postmodernist nature of the writing and, on the other, an equally noticeable spiritual turn. These twin trends seem on first sight to be incompatible but, as we will see, that need not necessarily be the case.