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1 . Jorge Semprún in 1970 . Photography extracted from Primera Plana magazine . Year VIII number 408 , November 1970 , Buenos Aires , Argentina . Public Domain
2 . Jorge Semprún , at La Comédie du livre de Montpellier , May 23 , 2009 . Picture : Dinkley / CC BY SA 3.0
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the border and carry out activity in Spain , forcing him to adopt several personalities under different names . The best known of these names was Federico Sánchez , and he also transferred the experience to his literary work . After democracy was restored in Spain , Semprún served as the Minister of Culture under the government of Felipe González . He left the office in 1991 .
His literary career began with the publication of Le grand voyage in 1936 , in which he tangentially explains the experience of the Nazi camps , since it is a story about the transport of deportees from Compiègne to Buchenwald . It would be in 1994 , with the publication of L ’ Écriture ou la vie , that his actual experience of the camp itself would appear in his literary work .
Jorge Semprún ’ s work is marked by ambiguity , paradox and opposition , the most relevant of which is that of writing or living . This characteristic has also influenced his reception : is it not significant that he is considered both a Spanish and a French writer , and therefore that his writing can testify to the experience of the deportees of one or the other country ? Does this ambiguity of reception not also say something about how the memory of political deportation has been passed down ?
It must be understood that Jorge Semprún began to write about his experience as a deportee in French . Moreover , he did so in France overview
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