First notes for the novel Le grand voyage

In 1963, at the age of forty, Jorge Semprún burst onto the French literary scene with his debut novel, Le grand voyage (The Long Voyage), recounting his experiences on his journey as a deportee to the Buchenwald concentration camp: memories he had long sought to bury in order to survive.

The novel was awarded the Prix Formentor, one of the major literary awards at the time. It was published in thirteen languages and boosted Semprún’s international career. The Franco regime was outraged by the award–given Jorge Semprún’s status as a Republican exile and an active communist leader–and launched a campaign to discredit him through the official press, censoring the book. Le grand voyage was not published in Spain until 1976, a year after Franco’s death.