Arnošt Lustig Books

During the Second World War, it was not unusual for “death trains” to cross Europe loaded with thousands of starving Jews. Having spent his teenage years in concentration camps, Arnost Lustig found himself on one of these transports in 1945, on the way to his own death. Along with a close friend, who was also a teenager, he made an incredibly daring escape. This is the story of that escape, and the weeks that the two boys spent in the dark forests of Germany trying to survive against hunger and cold, to avoid capture by the Germans, and to return to their native Prague. On the psychological plane, the book explores the subconscious minds of the two protagonists as they experience extreme fear, starvation, and physical exhaustion in their desperate flight toward freedom. The escape journey—undertaken against incredible odds—is described in such careful detail that the reader enters into the experience almost without realizing that he has slipped into a new kind of reality, and the frequent flashbacks to life in the concentration camps and ghettos give the entire book an unforgettable cinematic quality.

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

"Fifteen-year-old Hanka Kaudersova has ginger hair and clear, green eyes. hen 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 as 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. ovely 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."

Three novellas about resisting brutality, and the stupidity of dehumanizing power: a German prostitute assigned to Prague; a girl in a Nazi home for orphans; and a young woman working as a cashier in a movie theatre.

It is September 1944; the war is going badly for the Germans, and they are in a hurry to complete their 'final solution'. Compromises are being made on all sides, conditions are unspeakable, rumours are rife, but nothing definite is known of the Nazis' intentions. On the outskirts of a concentration camp in northern Bohemia three people - two eighteen-year-old men and a desperately lost young woman, Leah - are thrown together, sharing their precarious existence in an attic room. While the world disintegrates around them their relationships are charged with passion, their days filled with erotic and spiritual attraction. Caught in the web of their relationships, their futures are uncertain and any choices they have left to make will be made in the face of almost certain death...

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.

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20 reiche amerikanische Juden sollen angeblich 1943 im Austausch gegen einen deutschen Offizier aus dem KZ in die Freiheit entlassen werden. Als eine junge Frau begreift, dass ihr Weg doch in den Tod führt, erschiesst sie zwei der SS-Schergen.