Jorge Semprún

The stated aim of Soledad Fox Maura’s biography of Jorge Semprún is to fill the gap that exists because ‘there has been no in-depth study that contrasts Semprún’s actual experience with his literary work that examines the enigmas and paradoxes that made up his life’. Semprún’s life spanned most of the twentieth century, including exile in France due to the Spanish Civil War, fighting the Nazis as a member of the French Resistance, deportation to Buchenwald, clandestine work for the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), his expulsion from the party in the sixties and a successful career as a European writer and public intellectual that ensued, which provides rich pickings for a biographer. Fox’s undertaking benefits from the direct access to family members and archives, as well as Spanish intellectuals and politicians that the author can draw on, as evident by the many interviews she has conducted. As a result, the biography, first published in Spanish, claims to be the most comprehensive and definitive one. Even so it is surprising that the author makes scarce reference to Franziska Augstein’s Von Treue und Verrat: Jorge Semprun und sein Jahrhundert, published in German in 2008 and Spanish in 2011, or Felipe Nieto’s political biography La aventura comunista de Jorge Semprún: Exilio, clandestinidad y ruptura.

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