Description
Book SynopsisThe first major study of the profound impact of international communist politics and culture on Spanish letters
Trade Review A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2011.
"Spanning several decades of leftist literary production, this innovative, thought-provoking book underscores the cultural impact of, the Spanish Civil War, the International Brigades, Stalinism, the Czech purge, Rotspanier, the Marquis, and the Holocaust. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice
"A must-read for anyone interested in twentieth-century intellectual history."--
Bulletin of Spanish Studies"A brilliant analysis of the relationship between political commitment and activism, personal relations and affect."--
The Volunteer"Herrmann is an accomplished writer who brings together scholars from many disciplines and leaves us with engaging questions about the relationship between literature and politics."--
Hispania"Thoroughly researched and elegantly written,
Written in Red brings a sophisticated theoretical grounding and broad intellectual and historical contextualization to the analysis of the autobiographical writings of six major Spanish writers and public figures of the Civil War and postwar periods. It promotes a long-overdue reckoning of the role of Spain and the Spanish left in one of the central historical dramas of the twentieth century: the rise and fall of communist ideology and practice across Europe and Asia."--Kathleen Vernon, editor of
The Spanish Civil War and the Visual Arts"A tour-de-force, impressive in its novel engagement with the issue of the Spanish Communist Party's influence on writing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Written in Red is the first book dealing head on with party politics and commitment as an essential dimension to the writing itself."--Michael Ugarte, author of
Shifting Ground: Spanish Civil War Exile LiteratureTable of ContentsPreface ix
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction: The Subject of Communist Autobiography 1
1. Dolores Ibarruri and the Mothering of the Party 25
2. The Road to Consciousness: Youth and Conversion 54
3. The War in Spain 84
4. Exile and Left Melancholia: Maria Teresa Leon and Rafael Alberti 128
5. Between Devotion and Disillusion: Jorge Semprun, Teresa Pamies, and the Recovery of Communist Memory 166
Notes 203
Bibliography 219
Index 235
