num_pages: 320
description: Jorge Semprun was twenty years old - already an accomplished philosopher and poet - when arrested by Nazis for activites in the French Resistance. He was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. Literature or Life , a bestseller in France, is a deeply personal account not only of Semprun's time at Buchenwald, but also of the years before and after, of his painful attempts to write this book...created out of obsessions that returned him again and again like themes in a nightmarish rhapsody.His long reverie on life-as-death, now translated with the mesmerizing power of fiction. It is a profound contribution to Holocaust literature.? Semprun was awarded the Jerusalem prize at the 1997 Jerusalem International Book Fair.? Semprun's first novel, The Long Voyage , won Europe's prestigious Formentor Prize.
language: English
title: Literature or Life
titlecomplete: Literature or Life
characters: Jorge Semprun
genres: France, Roman, History, World War II, Holocaust, Spanish Literature, Biography, 20th Century, Memoir, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 846
awards: awardedAt: 757411200000
name: Prix Femina Vacaresco, awardedAt: 852105600000
name: French-American Foundation Translation Prize
category: Non-fiction
publisher: Penguin Books