The Long Voyage - aka The Cattle Truck Author:Jorge Semprun Gasping for breath in a cattle truck occupied by 119 other men, a young Spaniard captured fighting with the French Resistance counts off the days and nights as the train rolls slowly but inexorably toward Buchenwald. On the five seemingly endless days of the journey, he has conversations that send him into daydreams about his childhood or set hi... more »m fighting Resistance battles over again. He describes the temporary holding prison where the names of distant concentration camps are spoken of in whispers -- their individual horrors discussed, rated, contemplated. In chilling detail, the trip with those 119 men -- some fearful, some defiant -- is evoked, along with his own confusion, anger, and bitter resignation. When at last the fantastic, Wagnerian gates to Buchenwald come into sight, the young Spaniard is left alone to face the camp.
Semprún's first book, Le grand voyage (The Long Voyage in English, later republished as The Cattle Truck) recounts Semprún's deportation and incarceration in Buchenwald in fictionalized form. The novel won two literary prizes, the Prix Formentor and Prix littéraire de la Résistance ("Literary Prize of the Resistance").« less