Destino y memoria

Jorge Semprún (Madrid, 1923-Paris, 2011), writer, essayist and film scriptwriter, stands today as a crucial witness of European memory and history. Exiled early after the Spanish Civil War, active member of the French resistance, man of letters and Minister of Culture in Spain in the nineties, Semprún also survived the Nazi concentration hell and the shipwreck of the communist utopia, for which he had risked life in his years as a clandestine agent in Franco's Spain. The seven authors of this collective work, all of them specialists in the field of biography, literature, philosophy or cinema, outline the multiple facets of the very unique life trajectory of Jorge Semprún: the prisoner of the Buchenwald concentration camp, the dangerous trips to Madrid in the fifties as a communist militant, his confrontation with Santiago Carrillo y la Pasionaria, his passion for cinema or philosophy, and his consolidation as one of the greatest writers and intellectuals of his time. One hundred years after his birth, Destiny and Memory gives us a very complete portrait of the author of titles such as The Long Journey, That Sunday or Writing or Life, fundamental to understanding the horrors and hopes of the 20th century. Jordi Amat writes about Semprún's political career after his expulsion from the Communist Party; Anna Caballé offers the keys to the author's great novels; Benito Bermejo recreates the concentration camp world of which Semprún was a victim; Felipe Nieto describes the years of clandestine militancy; Reyes Mate reflects on the interest that Semprún always showed in German philosophy, and Esteve Riambau reviews the important relationship of the author with the world of cinema. Finally, Mayka Lahoz is in charge of the general edition of the book and clarifies the relevance that Jorge Semprún's work continues to have. The book is complemented by the author's memories and anecdotes provided by Miguel Ángel Aguilar, Juby Bustamante, Michi Straufeld, Claudio Aranzadi, Felipe González, Raimon, Claude Landman, José María Ridao, Thomas Landman, Carmen Claudín, Costa-Gavras and Juan Cross.