Max Aub

Max Aub Mohrenwitz (June 2, 1903, Paris – July 22, 1972 Mexico City) was a Mexican-Spanish experimentalist novelist, playwright and literary critic. In 1965 he founded the literary periodical Los Sesenta (the Sixties), with editors that included the poets Jorge Guillén and Rafael Alberti.

Aub was born in Paris to a Jewish French mother and German father, who was a travelling salesman. At the outbreak of World War I, his father was in Spain on business and could not return to France, as he had become an enemy alien. Max and his mother joined him there and they all took Spanish citizenship. In 1914 Aub and his family settled in Valencia. There he completed his secondary education. In 1920, Aub became a salesman, like his father and from 1920 to 1935 he traveled through Spain and other European countries selling a variety of different products. In 1921, he became a Spanish citizen. In 1929, Aub joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and remained a lifelong member.

During the Spanish Civil War, the Republican government posted him to Paris as a cultural attaché. In 1937, he was responsible for placing Picasso's "Guernica" on display at the International Exposition, and took part in the organisation of the Second Congress of Anti-Fascists Writers. After that, Aub returned to Spain and on August 1937 he was nominated general secretary of the Consejo Central de Teatro. In 1938 he worked in André Malraux's film L'espoir and wrote its screenplay.

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