Under a Cruel Star (book) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968 was published first under this title by Plunkett Lake Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

in 1986. The memoir was written by Heda Margolius Kovály

Heda Margolius Kovály

Heda Margolius Kovály was a Czech writer.- Early life :She was born Heda Bloch to Jewish parents in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where she lived until 1941 when her family was rounded up along with the rest of the city's Jewish population and taken to the Lodz Ghetto in central Poland.-...

and translated with Francis and Helen Epstein

Helen Epstein

Helen Epstein is a writer of memoir, journalism and biography who lives in Massachusetts, United States. She was born November 27, 1947 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, raised in New York City, and graduated from Hunter College High School in 1965.-Life:...

. It is now available in a Holmes & Meier, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

1997 edition and in a Plunkett Lake Press 2010 eBook edition. (Prague Farewell is the book title in the UK). The memoir was originally written in Czech and published in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

under the title Na vlastní kůži by 68 Publishers in Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

in 1973. An English translation appeared in the same year as the first part of the book The Victors and the Vanquished published by Horizon Press in New York

New York

. A British edition of the book excluded the second treatise and was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson under the title I Do Not Want To Remember in 1973.

Heda Margolius Kovály

Heda Margolius Kovály

was born in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

, spent the years of the Second World War in concentration camps

Nazi concentration camps

Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...

, escaped from a death march and took part in the Prague Uprising

Prague uprising

The Prague uprising was an attempt by the Czech resistance to liberate the city of Prague from German occupation during World War II. Events began on May 5, 1945, in the last moments of the war in Europe...

against the Nazis in May 1945. After the war, she worked at various Prague

Prague

publishing houses. In November 1952, her husband, Rudolf Margolius

Rudolf Margolius

Rudolf Margolius was Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, Czechoslovakia , and a co-defendant in the Slánský trial in November 1952....

was convicted in the Soviet staged Slánský Trial and executed on December 3, 1952. She has translated number of books by distinguished German, British and American authors and written one novel Innocence (Nevina) in Czech in 1985.

In his book Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

Cultural Amnesia (book)

Cultural Amnesia is a book of biographical essays by Clive James, first published in 2007. The U.K. title, published by MacMillan, is Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time, while the U.S. title, published by W.W...

(2007), Clive James

Clive James

Clive James, AM is an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism...

admired Kovály's "psychological penetration and terse style" and bestowed a remarkable praise: “Given 30 seconds to recommend a single book that might start a serious student on the hard road to understanding the political tragedies of the 20th century, I would choose this one."

Other reviews of the book:

Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis is a prominent liberal intellectual, writing for The New York Times op-ed page and The New York Review of Books, among other publications. He was previously a columnist for the Times . Before that he was London bureau chief , Washington, D.C...

, New York Times: "Once in a while we read a book that puts the urgencies of our time and ourselves in perspective, making us confront the darker realities of human nature."

San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner: "A story of human spirit at its most indomitable … one of the outstanding autobiographies of the century."

Alfred Kazin

Alfred Kazin

Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic, many of whose writings depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America....

: "An extraordinary memoir...written with so much quiet respect for the minutiae of justice and truth that one does not know where and how to specify Heda Kovály's splendidness as a human being... It is impossible to read her book without the deepest admiration for her quiet, fierce documentation of the ordeal of the Czech people in our time."

E. J. Graff, Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center, Columbia Journalism Review: "Under A Cruel Star is the most remarkable book for a variety of reasons: because Kovály has such a keen street sense for individual motivations; because her writing is so precise and beautiful: and, most of all, because she conveys such a ferocious and visceral sense that an individual life is just as important – and just as powerful – as governments, militaries, and political might."

New Statesman (UK): "A truly unforgettable book."

The Sunday Times (UK): "One does not ‘review’ a book like this. One weeps, and prays … Beautiful evocation of lovely Prague."

Josef Škvorecký

Josef Škvorecký

Josef Škvorecký, CM is a leading contemporary Czech writer and publisher who has spent much of his life in Canada. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country...

: "Written with the sophistication of a litterateur and the immediacy of a survivor."

See also