Exile, Writer, Soldier, Spy
Jorge Semprún
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In this gripping, authoritative biography, Soledad Fox Maura reveals the tumultuous true-life story of the Oscar-nominated screenwriter responsible for Z and The War Is Over.
A man of many faces, Jorge Semprún perfectly personified the struggles and successes of twentieth-century Europe. Semprún enjoyed a privileged childhood as the grandson of Spanish prime minister, Antonio Maura, until his world was shattered by the political strife of the Spanish Civil War and he went into exile. Facing dangers rarely seen outside the action movies of Hollywood, Semprún adopted a resilient spirit and rebel’s stance. He fought with the French Resistance in World War II and survived imprisonment at Buchenwald. After the war, he became an organizing member of the exiled Spanish communist party, maintaining the appearance of a normal civilian life while keeping one step ahead of Francisco Franco's secret police for years. Semprún later put his experiences on paper, becoming an internationally acclaimed author and screenwriter.
In this skillfully crafted biography, Semprún's life reads as easily as the best thriller, and has the same addictive rush as watching an edge-of-your-seat mini-series.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At first glance, all the elements seem to be in place for Maura, a professor of Spanish and comparative literature, to write a fascinating biography cum real life spy thriller about French Resistance fighter turned writer and politician Jorge Sempr n. Born in 1922 into an influential Madrid family that fled to France during the Spanish Civil War, Sempr n joined the Resistance as a student during WWII, and was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald. Following the war, he returned to Spain as an undercover Communist Party operative, and then escaped back to France, becoming a literary celebrity with his novels (most famously, The Last Voyage) and screenplays (earning Oscar nominations for La Guerre Est Finie and Z). In 1988, he became a minister in Spain's newly democratic government, and died in 2011 a respected public intellectual. Yet, in Maura's pedestrian, if serviceable, retelling of this colorful life, all the colors are muted. She asks many questions about the elusive, self-mythologizing Sempr n, including about inaccuracies in his account of Buchenwald, but answers few of them convincingly. Her reliance on large block quotes does not help the book's lack of momentum. Nor does her plodding style propel it into the realm of general interest, although Spanish history and literature specialists may find her research into Sempr n's life a useful addition to previous scholarship.
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