Lovely Green Eyes - Softcover

Lustig, Arnost

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860467164 ISBN 13: 9781860467165

Publisher: Harvill Press, 2002

Synopsis

Fifteen-year-old Hanka Kaudersov- has ginger hair and clear, green eyes. When her family is deported to Auschwitz, her mother, father and younger brother are sent to the gas chamber. By a twist of fate, Hanka is faced with a simple alternative: follow her family, or work in an SS brothel behind the eastern front. She chooses to live, her Aryan looks allowing her to disguise the fact that she is Jewish. As the German army retreats from the Russian front, Hanka battles cold, hunger, fear and shame, sustained by her hatred for the men she entertains, her friendship with the mysterious Estelle, and her fierce, burning desire for life. Lovely Green Eyes explores the compromises and sacrifices that an individual may make in order to survive, the way a woman can retain her identity in the face of appalling trauma, and the value of human life itself. This is a remarkable novel, which soars beyond nightmare, leaving the reader with a transcendent sense of hope. Translated from the Czech by Ewald Osers.

About this title

Product Description:

Unusual book

Review:

"Lustig writes about the Holocaust experience with a modest authority that is virtually unique-His genius lies in his ability to understate themes and situations which cry out for melodramatic treatment" (Lawrence L Langer Washington Post)

"Wholly unsentimental and clean of self-pity, Lustig returns in his novels and stories to the harrowing landscape of his youth, discovering within its brutal boundaries the grim but still achingly recognizable panoply of a last, vast, various neighbourhood of man" (Johanna Kaplan New York Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvill Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1860467164
• ISBN 13: 9781860467165
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256