ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a contribution to the growing Anglophone scholarship on Jorge Semprun's writing. It assesses the significance of Semprun's experience of exile and identity in those of his writings which do not take Buchenwald or Communism as their predominant focus. The book provides an overview of Semprun activities as a Communist underground leader from his return to France in April 1945 until the early 1960s. It examines the features of Semprun's approach to representing Buchenwald, his negotiation of literary genre, and his self-positioning as a revenant rather than as a survivor. The book analyses the importance of Semprun's strategy of foregrounding literariness, imagination and artifice in his representation of Buchenwald in order to facilitate the reception of that experience for his readers.