Radio Sefarad, in its programme El Marcapáginas, has just published an interview with Begoña Llovet, director of TANDEM Madrid, for her translation of the book Un Superviviente, by author Moriz Scheyer.
In this interview, Begoña Llovet makes a fascinating analysis of the text of the book she has translated, addressing both the literary aspects and the historical and social context in which Scheyer conceived his work. He highlights the author’s attitude towards his reality, since despite living in a difficult situation, humiliated and persecuted, “he continued to maintain a rational, cultured and tremendously shocking voice, without intending to do so”.
According to the synopsis of the book on the Ediciones Siruela website, Scheyer was an Austrian Jew, an important literary journalist and publisher in Vienna before the annexation of Austria in 1938, very well connected with the intellectual circles of the time. In 1943, hiding in a French convent, he began to write A Survivor, “the narrative of the harrowing, agitated and at times almost miraculous journey of his persecution through the turmoil of occupied Europe”.
In a SurvivorThe author gives an emotional and critical account of his experiences during the war: his exile to Paris, his time in a concentration camp, his contact with the Resistance and his clandestine life in the asylum for the mentally ill where he wrote his book. After Scheyer’s death in 1949, his stepson, Konrad Singer, disgusted by the book’s generic denunciation of the entire German people, tried to destroy it. However, Singer’s children found a manuscript on carbon paper that survived destruction, and so we have come to know this work.
Begoña Llovet has been sharing her responsibilities as director of TANDEM Madrid for many years with the publication of books such as the series Passport ELEcreated together with Matilde Cerrolaza and Óscar Cerrolaza, the translation of several works such as a Survivor and the novel Momo by Michael Endeor the collaboration in solidarity projects such as the book “Spanish in the Kitchen”directed by Professor Marisa de Prada, whose royalties are donated to the Vicente Ferrer Foundation in India.
