Arnost Lustig was born in Prague in 1926. In 1942 he was sent by the Nazis to Theresienstadt and later to Auschwitz, where his father died in the gas chambers, and finally to Buchenwald. He left Czechoslovakia after the Soviet occupation in 1968. He settled in 1970 in Washington D.C., where he is Professor of Literature at the American University. He is the author of The Unloved, Diamonds of the Night, A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova and Night and Hope. He is a two-time winner of the Jewish National Book Award.
Wholly unsentimental and clean of self-pity, Lustig returns in his novels and stories to the harrowing landscape of his youth, discovering within its brutal boundaries the grim but still achingly recognizable panoply of a last, vast, various neighbourhood of man -- Johanna Kaplan * New York Times * Lustig writes about the Holocaust experience with a modest authority that is virtually unique... His genius lies in his ability to understate themes and situations which cry out for melodramatic treatment -- Lawrence L Langer * Washington Post * Lustig survived Auschwitz. Every fibre of his latest book...resonates with the pain, questions and scars of the Holocaust * Daily Telegraph * Lustig has a wonderful talent for setting down the details of human misery and survival... He has faith in a soul that transcends the body...if I were a schoolteacher, I would teach this vivid picture of human evil as moral philosophy... A remarkable achievement * Independent * This is a major work of fiction... Czech-born Arnost Lustig, an Auschwitz survivor, writes about the Holocaust with such merciless clarity that at times one is ashamed to be human * Mail on Sunday *