Synopses & Reviews
In these three novellas, Arnost Lustig explores the existential interiors of those at the margin of disaster. A German prostitute assigned to Prague, a girl in a Nazi home for orphans, and a young woman working as a cashier in a movie theater lose themselves in a world of cruelty and collapsing social order--while their inner worlds teem with sexual fantasy, naïve idealism, vengefulness, and visions of justice. Yet these so-called indecent dreams cannot compare with the obscenity of cruelty and domination legitimated by the Nazi imagination.
Review
"Wholly unsentimental, and clean of self-pity, Mr. 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 neighborhood of man. . . . A world so entirely bound by suffering can be painful to enter; but Mr. Lustig, searching out a code of honor in this most defiled, inhuman sphere, has come upon a maximalist human canvas." --
New York Times Book ReviewAbout the Author
Holocaust survivor Arnost Lustig was born in Prague in 1926. Lustig became a radio reporter and upon his return from Prague with his mother. Currently, Lustig teaches at the American University in Washington, D. C. Lustig's short story selections include Children of the Holocaust, Indecent Dreams, and Street of Lost Brothers. His awards include an Emmy, a National Jewish Book Award, and the Karel Capek Award for Literary Achievement by President Valclav Havel.
Table of Contents
Blue Day
The Girl with the Scar
Indecent Dreams
Afterword by Josef Škvorecký