3 best books by the fascinating Jorge SemprĂșn

The uprooting of SemprĂșn's prolonged exile, due to the establishment of the Franco regime, endowed Jorge Semprun of a special libertarian imprint that would deepen even more when he was imprisoned in Buchenwald back in 1943, for belonging to the French partisans who faced the invading German army. The experiences of those days and his subsequent liberation at the end of the Second World War left a naturally transcendental mark on the work of the writer SemprĂșn.

Logically, once outside of Spain and with the Franco regime not very favorable towards him, Jorge SemprĂșn wrote mostly, or at least published, in French.

His unquestionable political convictions and his great popular consideration brought him closer to active institutional politics, initially belonging to the PCE, until a later phase in the late 80s when he was Minister of Culture with the PSOE.

I do not usually make political references, but I consider that in the case of SemprĂșn politics is one of his literary motives, through his active social experiences, the author almost always narrates with an autobiographical character, with the undeniable feeling of constant life adventure. An author worth reading beyond his undoubted literary quality.

Top 3 recommended novels by Jorge SemprĂșn

Autobiography of Federico SĂĄnchez

What is true about the autobiographical point of the author remains in that fascinating limbo of fictional narrative (come on, what has been the memory of each one, capable as we are of magnifying our brightest moments and erasing or softening the bad moments).

There is nothing better to write about oneself than to project oneself towards an alter ego with which SemprĂșn plays to build a story based on the evocations of memory, as if letting himself be carried away by that whim of memories that assault with their great forgotten news from the past.

And yet, within that unpredictable cadence of the times of the supposed Federico SĂĄnchez, of his youth at the head of the resistance, of his run-ins with destiny, of his taste for reason in favor of the most palpable democracy, despite everything This supposed disorder, the common thread finally proposed by SemprĂșn, perfectly constructs the character of Federico SĂĄnchez.

Autobiography of Federico SĂĄnchez

The long journey

Long journey and as long or more writing process. I suppose (and perhaps it is a lot to suppose) that narrating the days of Nazi captivity that SemprĂșn lived would suppose a whole exercise in sublimation and resilience, understandable because it cost him so much and also the clear metaphor of the title as the inner journey towards the liberation of the soul of horror lived.

SemprĂșn took around twenty years to publish the book about the experiences in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Or, modifying my way of assuming, perhaps SemprĂșn really needed all that time to organize his mental notes, to transmit with absolute frankness what he had to live. Who knows? Sometimes the motives of any act are deciphered as a sum of factors.

For a writer, finding the reasons to tell something is not always easy and, in the case of SemprĂșn, who would gather more reasons than anyone else, he spent all that time waiting to do it. The story begins in one of those trains whose iron path led its passengers towards exploitation, denigration and a more than probable death.

The sensation already leads to suffocation in that wagon that moves for a very long time through invisible landscapes in the darkness of that space.

What happened next is known in an objective version, in the cold numbers of casualties, in the sinister knowledge of aberrant practices ..., and yet, told by a writer who lived it in his flesh, the sum of stories acquires another very special aspect .

The long journey

Twenty years and one day

In a small town in Toledo, on July 18, 1956, the Avendaño family prepares for a unique celebration. In a setting that seems inspired by Miguel Delibes placeholder image and his innocent saints, the characters participate in the commemoration of the mourning death of a relative at the hands of some peasants who decided to take his wicked justice.

The appearance of a secret Franco policeman ties this novel together with Federico SĂĄnchez's Autobiography, with which, knowing the nature of the alter ego of this Federico with respect to the author, SemprĂșn again offers clear clues about the transcendental cameo of his own experiences in this story.

The novel, beyond this starting point of the strange celebration, takes as a character reference Mercedes Pombo, the magnetic widow of the Avendaño family. Around her the Francoist policeman, a Hispanicist and the entire town of Quismondo haunt with their particular intentions towards a surprising truth finally.

Twenty years and one day
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