A Critical Companion to Jorge Semprún Buchenwald, Before and After

A Critical Companion to Jorge Semprún: Buchenwald, Before and After explores the life and work of Spanish Buchenwald survivor, author, and communist leader-turned-apostate, Jorge Semprún (1923-2011). Semprún led an extraordinary and risky life; he suffered and actively fought against Stalinism, Nazism, and Francoism. As a novelist, autobiographer, screenwriter, playwright, and essayist, his oeuvre grapples with the responsibility that surviving and deciphering paradigm-shattering historical events entails. This volume explores his cultural production in all its manifestations, across diverse languages and genres.

Ofelia Ferrán is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Minnesota, USA. She is the author of Working through Memory: Memory and Remembrance in Contemporary Spanish Narrative and co-editor of A World of Difference, Women's Narrative and Film in Twentieth Century Spain.

Gina Herrmann is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Oregon, USA. She is the author of Written in Red: The Communist Memoir in Spain.

Introduction; Ofelia Ferránand Gina Herrmann
PART I. HISTORICAL CONTEXTS AND CALLINGS
1. Jorge Semprún and the Writing of Identity: Family Origins and Fictional Construction; Françoise Nicoladzé
2. Jorge Semprún and his Heteronym Federico Sánchez; Javier Pradera
3. The Clandestine Militant Who Would Be Minister: Semprún and Cinema; Esteve Riambau
PART II: ON DEATH AND HOLOCAUST WITNESSING
4. "Don't leave me, pal": Witnessing Death in Semprún's Buchenwald Narratives; Dorota Glowacka
5. Semprun, Philosophy, and the Texture of Literature; Carol L. Bernstein
6. In the Name of Things That Have Happened: Jorge Semprun and the Writing of History; Emmanuel Bouju
PART III: GENDER, GENRE, AND ART
7. Jorge Semprún and the Myth of Woman; Ursula Tidd
8. A Mirror of History: The Self and Its Reflections in Jorge Semprún's Oeuvre. Veinte años y un día: Duality and Vertigo; María A. Semilla Durán
9. The Significance of Art in Semprun's Writing; Tijana Miletic
PART IV: THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL
10. Dissidence, Citizenry, and Witnessing: Three Screenplays by Jorge Semprún; Txetxu Aguado
11. Semprún's Germany - Germany's Semprún: Stereoscopic Scenes of a Twentieth Century; Ulrich Winter
12. Jorge Semprún's Speeches: Self-Fashioning and the Idea of Europe; Jaime Céspedes
PART V: MARXIST AESTHETICS
13. Semprun and Lukács: For a Marxist Reading of Le grand voyage; Antoine Bargel
14. Jorge Semprún, Brecht, and Theater; Jaime Céspedes
Epilogue: Laudatio on the presentation of the Goethe Medal to Jorge Semprún, Weimar, February 2003; Ruth Klüger