San Juan: (Tragedia)

Valencia: Pre-Textos, 1998. 265 pages: illustrations; 19 cm. Rústica./ Includes bibliographical references (pages 99-105). New and stil sealed in oprioginal shrinkwrap. . Paperback. ISBN: 8481911852; 9788481911855

In Spanish. Pre-textos; 341. San Juan is a three-act tragedy about Jewish refugees aboard an old cargo ship in the Mediterranean, turned away from every port where they try to land. It was published in Mexico in 1943 by the press Tezontle. The ship carries a great many Jews fleeing antisemitism in inhuman conditions, and the action opens with it anchored off an unnamed port. One account puts the passengers at 623 Jews who fled in 1938 as fascism advanced across Europe. In the end no harbor will take the San Juan, and it sinks with everyone aboard. The play draws on Aub's own experience. He first conceived it in 1940, held in the hold of a broken-down ship taking him to a labor camp. He then wrote much of it on the way to Mexico, aboard a French ship that he said was worse than his fictional San Juan. Although the ship is invented, its voyage recalls real refugee ships of the period, such as the ill-fated SS St. Louis and the Struma. Critics have read the play's collective protagonist as a modern tragic chorus and compared it with Cervantes's La Numancia. One scholar notes that it appeared fifteen years before Leon Uris's refugee-ship novel Exodus, yet has never enjoyed the same reputation. || Théâtre -- Espagne -- 20e siècle. Theater Spanish drama -- 20th century -- History and criticism. Holocaust, Judaica