Czech author Arnost Lustig dies, aged 84: report
AFP
PRAGUE- Czech novelist, short story writer and Holocaust survivor Arnost Lustig died in Prague on Saturday, aged 84, after fighting blood cancer for five years, the CTK news agency reported.
Born into a Jewish family in 1926, Lustig was transported to Buchenwald and Auschwitz death camps as a teenager by the Nazis.
He escaped a train taking him to the Dachau concentration camp at the end of World War II to return to Prague in time for the uprising against the Germans.
Many of his novels draw on his time in the death camps and immediately afterwards. His heroes are ordinary people affected by the Holocaust.
His novels include "Dita Sax" (1962), the story of a teenage girl who survives a death camp, and "A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova" (1964), about a girl who tries to pay her way out of a Nazi prison.
In "Darkness Casts No Shadow" (1976), two teenagers try to survive in a forest after escaping from a Nazi transport.
He also wrote a number of short stories on the Holocaust, including "Night and Hope" (1957) and "Diamonds of the Night" (1958).
After the war, he studied journalism and worked as a reporter covering the Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49.
In 1968, after former Czechoslovakia was invaded by Warsaw Pact troops, Lustig, working as a scriptwriter, left the country for Yugoslavia and Israel to end up in the United States, where he lectured on film and literature at the American University in Washington.
After the communist regime was overthrown in Czechoslovakia in 1989, he returned to his home country which split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
From 1995-1997, he was the editor-in-chief of the Czech Playboy.
He won the international Franz Kafka Prize in 2008, and his novel "Lovely Green Eyes" (2000) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.
Despite his wartime experience and long disease, he remained an optimist.
"I have survived everything in my life so far, so maybe I'll survive the cancer too," he said in a magazine interview earlier this year, when he was largely confined to bed.
"I think my life's OK," he added.
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Many of his novels draw on his time in the death camps and immediately afterwards. His heroes are ordinary people affected by the Holocaust.
His novels include "Dita Sax" (1962), the story of a teenage girl who survives a death camp, and "A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova" (1964), about a girl who tries to pay her way out of a Nazi prison.
In "Darkness Casts No Shadow" (1976), two teenagers try to survive in a forest after escaping from a Nazi transport.
He also wrote a number of short stories on the Holocaust, including "Night and Hope" (1957) and "Diamonds of the Night" (1958).
After the war, he studied journalism and worked as a reporter covering the Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49.
In 1968, after former Czechoslovakia was invaded by Warsaw Pact troops, Lustig, working as a scriptwriter, left the country for Yugoslavia and Israel to end up in the United States, where he lectured on film and literature at the American University in Washington.
After the communist regime was overthrown in Czechoslovakia in 1989, he returned to his home country which split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
From 1995-1997, he was the editor-in-chief of the Czech Playboy.
He won the international Franz Kafka Prize in 2008, and his novel "Lovely Green Eyes" (2000) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.
Despite his wartime experience and long disease, he remained an optimist.
"I have survived everything in my life so far, so maybe I'll survive the cancer too," he said in a magazine interview earlier this year, when he was largely confined to bed.
"I think my life's OK," he added.
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