Soledad Fox Maura - Exile, Writer, Soldier, Spy: The Life of Jorge Semprún

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Selected Works

Exile, Writer, Soldier, Spy: The Life of Jorge Semprún

"Jorge Semprún packed four or five lives into one. Artist, prisoner, freedom fighter, diplomat, organizer—in his eighty-seven years he quite literally embodied the story of a whole continent. Soledad Fox's superb biography tells his story with clarity, grace, and high style, just as Semprún lived. This is an essential book, biography and history told with novelistic precision."—Jonathan Blitzer, writer for The New Yorker

Ida y vuelta. La vida de Jorge Semprún

La biografía definitiva de Jorge Semprún, un personaje de leyenda que atravesó el siglo XX español y europeo en primera línea.

Jorge Semprún - L'écriture et la vie

La vie de Jorge Semprún reflète presque tous les épisodes de l'histoire de l'Europe au XXe siècle.

A Spanish Woman in Love and War: Constancia del la Mora

By addressing the political and sociological meanings of Constancia de la Mora’s communism, the author opens up further audiences among historians of twentieth-century Spain while her exploration of how, why and with what consequences de la Mora then concealed this allegiance embeds her story in the domestic political history of twentieth-century America with its central mobilising narrative of anticommunism. Professor Helen Graham, Dept. of History, Royal Holloway, University of London

Connie

Biografía de Constancia de la Mora, aristócrata y republicana, una de las figuras más paradójicas de su época.

Flaubert and Don Quijote: The Influence of Cervantes on Madame Bovary

Flaubert used Cervantes' great novel as a model in his attempt to renew literature, to liberate him from the grasp of dominant literary schools. But the significance of Fox's study goes far beyond a detailed analysis of a single case in the history of literature. It is a 'comparative' study in the deepest sense of this term. The book shows how the discontent with actual literature in both cases of Cervantes and Flaubert leads first of all toward an ironic parody, distantiation from the dominant trends and later to radically new forms of artistic consciousness… The study is full of insights and is made by a very subtle and intelligent scholar who has a rare capacity not to force the material, but to listen to its voice with extraordinary respect and acumen. - Mikhail Iampolski, Professor of Comparative Literature, New York University

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Exile, Writer, Soldier, Spy: The Life of Jorge Semprún

"Fox Maura lays out her questions from the start: "What was it that really led [Semprún] to join the Resistance? How much are his books based on personal memories, or on second-hand information about the Nazi concentration camps? Where does he stand within Holocaust culture, as a non-Jew and as a writer whose testimony is highly fictionalized? Fox Maura's treatment of all this is entertaining, fast-paced, and fully informed."

—The Times Literary Supplement

"Engaging . . . Fox Maura's impeccable biography expertly dissects the complex nuances of Semprún's work and experiences, doing justice to a singular life."

-Los Angeles Review of Books

"After reading this lively and intriguing biography, I'm amazed that most of us know so little about Jorge Semprún, even though we've likely seen films that he inspired or wrote. This man of great zest, talent, and courage who played so many roles in the crises of his time—underground resister, novelist, cabinet minister and more—reminds me of no one so much as André Malraux. It's a pleasure to have his remarkable life now available to us in English."

—Adam Hochschild, author of Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939