Novel
The Hangwoman
Katyně
Pavel Kohout · 1978
Synopsis
Lizinka Tachezy, fifteen, the daughter of a philologist, gentle, docile and with no marked aptitude, is sent by a careers adviser to a brand-new higher school where executioners are trained; she is the only girl there, among six boys. She is taught to hang, to guillotine, to impale, and the learned history of the trade; her parents, her teachers and the men around her each shape her in their own way, all in the name of lofty principles.
Context
The novel could not appear in its author's country: it appeared first in German, in 1978, under the title Die Henkerin, then in Czech, in exile, in 1980. A university study counts it among the pretexts invoked to strip its author of Czechoslovak nationality. The French translation appeared in 1979 from Albin Michel, in the collection “Les grandes traductions”, the English translation in 1981 in New York.
Who it is for
Nearly four hundred pages in French, of sustained black humour, mixed with pseudo-scholarly essays. Translated by Milena Braud and Walter Weideli.
Prizes and reception
One of its author's best-known books, translated into German, French and English within the following three years.