Birthday

1923-12-10

Place of Birth

Madrid, Spain

Biography

Jorge Semprún Maura (born 10 December 1923 in Madrid) is a Spanish writer and politician. From 1953 to 1962, during the era of Francisco Franco, Semprún lived clandestinely in Spain working as an organizer for the exiled Communist Party of Spain, but was expelled from the party in 1964. After the death of Franco and change to a democratic government, he served as Culture Minister of Spain from 1988 to 1991. He was a screenwriter for two successive films by the Greek director Costa-Gavras, Z (1969) and The Confession (1970), which dealt with the theme of persecution by governments. For his work on Z, Semprun won an Oscar. In 1996, he became the first non-French author elected to the Académie Goncourt, which awards an annual literary prize.