Dr Josef's Little Beauty - Softcover

Zyta Rudzka; Translated By Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1911710087 ISBN 13: 9781911710080

Publisher: Seven Stories Press UK, 2024

Synopsis

A Holocaust story as fascinating and compelling as it is terrifying and puzzling ― a book about aging and war crimes, pain and pride.

In the middle of summer, omnipresent heat radiates as a group of elderly people are remembering their youth. The story focuses on two sisters, Leokadia and Czechna, who live together in a retirement home not far from Warsaw. These are not ordinary stories they are sharing, because both of them spent time as children in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. At the center is Czechna, who at the age of 12 was saved from extermination by the notorious doctor Josef Mengele, the real-life Nazi officer and physician who was known as the “angel of death” for the experiments he conducted on prisoners, including twins and siblings.

This is a story both provocative and disturbing about the fear that lingers in victims. Was the sisters’ relationship with the executioner a desperate attempt to save their lives, or perhaps they harbor a hideous pride and sense of superiority over other prisoners? Rudzka’s extraordinary writing turns unsettling questions about memory and survival into art.

About this title

About the Author

Zyta Rudzka (1964) is an award-winning playwright, novelist, and psychologist from Warsaw. She began her career as a poet in 1989 and debuted in 1991 with the novel White Clichés and became famous for her plays (e.g. The Sugar Bra, 2008 that were translated into Russian, Bulgarian, Italian and German and staged abroad. A masterful writer with a terse and forceful style, her novel Dr Josef’s Little Beauty has recently been revised and reissued (2021) as one of a trilogy of novels that explore old age and the final stage of life. The other two books in the trilogy are A Brief Exchange of Fire (2018, winner of the Gdynia Literary Award, shortlisted for the Nike Literary Award) and Soft Tissues (2020, winner of the City of Warsaw Literary Award).

Antonia Lloyd-Jones has translated works by several of Poland's leading contemporary novelists and reportage authors, as well as crime fiction, poetry, and children's books. Her translation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by 2018 Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. She is a mentor for the Emerging Translators' Mentorship Programme, and former co-chair of the UK Translators Association.

Edition details

• Publisher: Seven Stories Press UK
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1911710087
• ISBN 13: 9781911710080
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224