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 towards Buchenwald. On the five seemingly endless days of the journey, he talks to an unnamed Frenchman from Semur. Sometimes the conversation sends him into daydreams about his childhood; sometimes he looks into the future and the nightmare setting in which his friend's memory will come back to haunt him. When at last the concentration camp's Wagnerian gates come into sight, 'the guy from Semur' dies suddenly and inexplicably and the young Spaniard has to face the camp alone. 'The diabolical plot of this extraordinary novel was supplied by the Nazis, who had no idea that Jorge Semprun would use it one day for the purposes both humane and cautionary. The Cattle Truck is a work of fiction founded on unimaginable fact.' - Paul Bailey
