Dita Saxová

by Arnošt Lustig

Hrdinkou je židovská dívka, která přestála koncentrační tábory, ale zůstala na světě sama - nikdo z jejích příbuzných a blízkých nepřežil. Osmnáctiletá Dita, mlčenlivá a téměř úzkostně neprůbojná, se však jen stěží orientuje v poválečné společnosti, v níž opět raší bezohlednost a zištnost, kde na ni čekají jen opětovná zklamání, kde jejím pocitům nikdo nerozumí.

Genres: Fiction, Czech Literature, Classics, Jewish, Novels, School, Holocaust

420 pages, Hardcover

Published April 20, 2007

About the author

Arnošt Lustig (born 21 December 1926 in Prague) is a renowned Czech Jewish author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays whose works have often involved the Holocaust.

As a Jewish boy in Czechoslovakia during World War II, he was sent in 1942 to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, from where he was later transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, followed by time in the Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1945, he escaped from a train carrying him to the Dachau concentration camp when the engine was mistakenly destroyed by an American fighter-bomber. He returned to Prague in time to take part in the May 1945 anti-Nazi uprising.

After the war, he studied journalism at Charles University in Prague and then worked for a number of years at Radio Prague. He worked as a journalist in Israel at the time of its War of Independence where he met his future wife, who at the time was a volunteer with the Haganah. He was one of the major critics of the Communist regime in June 1967 at the 4th Writers Conference, and gave up his membership in the Communist Party after the 1967 Middle East war, to protest his government's breaking of relations with Israel. However, following the Soviet-led invasion that ended the Prague Spring in 1968, he left the country, first to Israel, then Yugoslavia and later in 1970 to the United States. After the fall of eastern European communism in 1989, he divided his time between Prague and Washington DC, where he continued to teach at the American University. After his retirement from the American University in 2003, he became a full-time resident of Prague. He was given an apartment in the Prague Castle by then President Václav Havel and honored for his contributions to Czech culture on his 80th birthday in 2006. In 2008, Lustig became the eighth recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize. [1]

Lustig is married to the former Vera Weislitzová (1927), daughter of a furniture maker from Ostrava who was also imprisoned in the Terezín concentration camp. Unlike her parents, she was not deported to Auschwitz. She wrote of her family's fate during the Holocaust in the collection of poems entitled "Daughter of Olga and Leo." They have two children, Josef (1950) and Eva (1956).

His most renowned books are A Prayer For Katerina Horowitzowa (published and nominated for a National book award in 1974), Dita Saxová (1979), Night and Hope (1985), and Lovely Green Eyes (2004). Dita Saxová and Night and Hope have been filmed.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lustig survived three concentration camps to emerge as one of Czechia’s finest writers on life after the Holocaust. This novel takes place in the house of orphaned young men and women in their late teens and surgically examines the shattered psyche of Dita Saxova, a pulchritudinous survivor of the same camps as the author. The loose, meandering quality of the novel is appropriate for a searching, philosophical exploration of trying to fathom existence in the wake of unimaginably horrific circumstances. This grim backdrop is leavened by the lightness, flightiness of Saxova’s nature, and her (excessive) penchant for maxims.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is dark, and what else is to be expected? Dita is survivor of the concentration camps, and is lost in Europe after the war is over. Not lost physically, but unloosed from everything important and grounding, and safe. The things she goes through to try and make herself feel again, to make it all mean something are haunting -- a dark book that tells us so much about the state of mind of Europe after World War II.

[Tereza Matoušková · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strašně špatně se to četlo. Ne, ona je to výborná kniha, ale některé scény mě prostě hrozně braly. Navíc je Lustig hodně popisný a hodně se ve věcech rýpe, což taky není zrovna jednoduché na přelouskání.

[Yacoob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Klasický efekt Alberta Moravii. Celou dobu se bojíte, že jí někdo znásilní a pak se to stane. Teda vlastně tady ne tak úplně, ale stejně to nedopadne dobře :)

[Mala · Rating 5 out of 5]

LIFE IS NOT WHAT YOU WANT.IT IS WHAT YOU HAVE((right now))

[Adri Dosi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Já si Lustiga pletu s Fischlem a s Vaculíkem, protože jsem s nimi poprvé přišla do kontaktu ve stejnou dobu a nebylo mi ani 15. Od té doby mám tendenci se plést. Věděla jsem, že jeden styl mi nesedí... a byl to Lustig. Jeho jediná věc, co se mi líbila byla Kateřina Horowitzová... a i to bylo pro mne zvláštní. Chápu tu uměleckou stránku dané věci, která se zažírá pod kůži, protože autor ví o čem píše, protože si něčím prošel, ale musím prostě konstatovat, že já toto nemám ráda. Souhlasím s kritickými recenzemi. Číst to pro mě bylo jako hlazení proti srsti...drsný bylo, že člověk věděl, že by si toho měl vážit, že to má hloubku a uměleckost a že to si zaslouží oceněnění a já si prostě nemohla pomoct.. nelíbilo se mi to. Trápila jsem se při čtení.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of Dita Saxova, taking place in 1947, who is an eighteen year old survivor of the concentration camps. She survived not because of anything she did but, as she says, because they were too busy killing other people too get around to her. It is a disheartening and ultimately tragic tale of her attempts to try to regain some semblance of her life that no longer contains family or any of her former friends. Lustig used many philosophical idioms and phrases in telling his story that often delved into the psychological damage inflicted upon the survivors.

[Theresa_ss · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 *

[Marie Kasikova · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHY'D YOU JUMP DOWN THE HILL GIRL

[Harald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-meaning novel about returned KZ prisoners

The theme is important and engaging, but it was still a challenge to get through the 189 pages. The first three parts of the novel are located to a student hostel for Czech-Jewish girls who have survived German KZ camps. Now they have returned to Prague for support to resume their lives after terrible losses. But what kind of life can there be in 1947? How should they relate to the past? This is talked about and lingered on in long conversations with roommates, girlfriends and the older members of the now small Jewish community in the city.

Dita Saxova (or Sax) is the beautiful girl who is the centerpiece of the book, but at the same time she seems the character with the least focused expectations for the future. She does, however, fulfill her wish for a stay in Switzerland, but her meeting with the Swiss in the fourth and final part of the book Dita experiences as a culture shock and a downturn.

I had the pleasure of meeting Arnošt Lustig when I was studying in Washington, DC, in the 1980s. He gladly shared a beer with the students. Several of his books have been translated into other languages, including Norwegian.

[anet · Rating 5 out of 5]

jedna z mych oblibenejsich knizek cesky literarury, ke cteni je potreba klid, aby z toho byl poradnej pozitek, cetlo se mi to vicemene pekne, rekla bych ze to je to lustigovo dilo s velkym d. je to asi narocnejsi cetba, ne pro vsechny, ale moje ocekavani to rozhodne nezklamalo, kdyz jsem verila, ze ma lustig potencial, timhle moje ocekavani naprosto splnil

[Aemilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Uvažovala o tom, jak se snaží člověk být šťasten nějakým vytrvalým způsobem, a právě proto vypadá jako ztracená duše."