Novel
Dita Saxova
Dita Saxová
Arnošt Lustig · 1962
Synopsis
Prague, 1947. Dita Saxová, eighteen years old, the only survivor of her family, returned from the camps, lives in a home opened by the Jewish community for orphaned girls. Beautiful and courted, she nevertheless cannot forget or form a bond; with her companions, she talks endlessly about what one can do with a life when everything that came before it has been destroyed, and dreams of a stay in Switzerland.
Context
The author had published two story collections, Noc a naděje and Démanty noci, when this novel appeared in 1962; a completed edition appeared in exile, in Toronto, from Sixty-Eight Publishers, in 1979. He wrote the screenplay himself with Antonín Moskalyk, who brought it to the screen in 1967; the future filmmaker Jiří Menzel plays a role in it. Jeanne Němcová's English translation appeared in New York in the same year as the Toronto edition.
Who it is for
A novel of conversations more than of action, of about three hundred and fifty pages in the English edition. No French translation has been located.
Prizes and reception
National Jewish Book Award in 1980 for its English translation; one of its author's best-known books.