Arnošt Lustig

Modlitba pro Katerinu Horovitzovou

Dita Saxova opens in 1947 as the title character, an eighteen-year-old concentration camp survivor, tries to start a new life in post-World War Il Prague.

Dita Saxova

Night and Hope is a collection of seven stories that center around events and personalities in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where the author, Arnost Lustig, was interned during the second world war. He is today most revered as a writer of screenplays, and often referred to as the creative mind behind the Czech New Wave Cinema, predicted on the macabre and gothic sensibilities that beset a troubled youth. Fittingly in these short stories the horror of camp life and the Holocaust is gradually revealed through the eyes of people whose simplicity has been thwarted, and whose thoughts are being suffocated with hopelessness. Lustig has a verve for tarrying through the concerns of the individual, Sartrean in its emphasis, as an agent of his or her own destiny. He explores the nature of personal identity and a search for meaning in a world in which symbols, signs, institutions and language itself have been turned upside down; in which angst and an unfathomable abyss are kept at bay by insitent despair. The way in which his characters - an old shopkeeper, a middle-aged salesman, and two young disillusioned boys among others - react under such conditions is presented as proof that in the face of destruction there is an unvanquished human essence that survives and thrives. -- From http://www.amazon.com (Feb. 13, 2015).

Night and Hope

The nine stories in this book are based on Lustig's own experiences in ghettos and concentration camps during World War II.

Diamonds of the Night

Rugă pentru Katerina Horovitzova

The Unloved traces five months in the life of Perla S., a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl who, while living in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, becomes a prostitute. Capturing Perla's voice through a series of entries in her diary, Lustig tells how she, living in a world of lies and horror, maintains her integrity, honesty, and hope. This first paperback edition of The Unloved has been extensively revised and expanded by Lustig.

From the Diary of Perla S.

The Unloved

Dita Saxova is an eighteen-year-old concentration camp survivor trying to start a new life in postwar Prague. Living in a special hostel for orphans from the camps, too old to be cared for parentally, too young to be fully adult, too soaked in reality to harbor many illusions, Dita struggles to reconcile struggles to reconcile her unfathomable past with her enigmatic future. First published in Czech in 1962, then in English in 1979, Dita Saxova confirms Arnost Lustig's place as one of the masterful storytellers of the Holocaust period.

Tanga z Hamburku

dívka z Hamburku

Tanga

dívka z Antverp

Colette

Ke svému doma i v zahraničí vysoce ceněnému dílu připojil Arnošt Lustig román Krásné zelené oči. Tento román je kladně hodnocen kritikou i čtenáři v USA a Velké Británii, kde v roce 2000 vyšel vůbec poprvé. Pro české vydání autor knihu zrevidoval a doplnil o pasáže, které v zahraničí publikované dílo neobsahovalo. V roce 2003 byl román navržen na Pulitzerovu cenu. Zelené oči má patnáctiletá Kůstka, Hanka Kaudersová, plachá zrzka, která jako jediná z rodiny ušla smrti v Auschwitz-Birkenau. Lustigova próza je výrazná svým napínavým příběhem, který se odehrává převážně v polním nevěstinci, zároveň je však úsporná a zdrženlivá, pokud jde o líčení fyzické a duchovní krutosti.

Krásné zelené oči

George Theiner

Arnoest Theiner

This volume is a landmark of Holocaust Literature and among the finest works of fiction produced by any writer since World War II. The center of Arnost Lustig's impressive oeuvre, the collection expresses his faith in the power of individuals - especially children - to shape their own destinies. These profoundly moving stories transcend the gruesome realities of the camps; their strength is that of the human spirit, the individual's ability to achieve moral triumph through action. Lustig's fiction shines among this century's outstanding literary achievements. This volume contains sixteen short stories previously published under the titles Diamond of the Night and Night and Hope and the novel Darkness Casts No Shadow. Conceived and written as a whole, they are published here together for the first time.

Children of the Holocaust

"Des centaines de milliers d'hommes et de femmes dociles comme des moutons étaient déjà passés par ce vestiaire, et il ne s'était jamais rien produit de la sorte." Peut-être est-ce quelque chose dans son regard ou son pas souple de danseuse, peut-être sa fierté ou même sa prière expresse, qui amena Herman Cohen, porte-parole du groupe, à faire sortir du rang Katarzyna Horowitz. Auschwitz, 1943: la jeune femme échappe ainsi à la chambre à gaz et se joint à une vingtaine d'hommes d'affaires juifs américains qui ont su monnayer leur libération avec les nazis... sauf que le pacte se révèle être un piège et une course absurde vers la liberté, qui pousse Katarzyna Horowitz à commettre l'impensable. La Danseuse de Varsovie, c'est le portrait fascinant d'une jeune femme qui, face à l'inacceptable, fait l'ultime choix de la dignité humaine.

Prière pour Katarzyna Horowitz

La danseuse de Varsovie

For the first time, Arnost Lustig's short story collections Street of Lost Brothers and Indecent Dreams and his novel Dita Saxova are brought together in an omnibus edition. As with all of Lustig's works, these tales reverberate with themes of loss and contradiction, with the torments of suffering and survival. In The Bitter Smell of Almonds, Lustig asks questions as old and as universal as humankind's search for the meaning of existence; and his characters, often juxtaposed against people or situations they cannot comprehend, attempt to come to terms with the unthinkable and with life itself.

Selected Fiction

The Bitter Smell of Almonds

Odcházím do snu a jiné povídky

Colette Cohenová, devatenáctiletá belgická židovka s démantem pod jazykem, je zmítána mezi hlubokým milostným citem a brutálním sexuálním násilím. Dvě podoby lásky tak odlišné a tak podobné jako pravda a lež. Milostný příběh z prostředí osvětimského lágru je tak i příběhem o zmatení všech lidských hodnot, kdy je jen tenká hranice mezi dobrem a zlem, pravdou a lží, láskou a nenávistí.

Colette, dívka z Antverp

Zloděj kufrů

After witnessing the suicide of her father and the murder of her mother and brother upon their arrival in Auschwitz, fifteen-year-old Hanka Kaudersova is forced to choose between working in a German military brothel on the eastern front or death, in a haunting novel that examines the compromises and choices one is forced to make in order to survive. 15,000 first printing.

Arnošt Lustig

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