Lovely Green Eyes - Tapa blanda

"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)

"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)

"Lustig survived Auschwitz. Every fibre of his latest book...resonates with the pain, questions and scars of the Holocaust" (Daily Telegraph)

"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)

"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)

Fifteen-year-old Hanka Kaudersová has ginger hair and clear, green eyes. When her family is deported to Auschwitz, her mother, father and younger brother are sent to the gas chamber. By a twist of fate, Hanka is faced with a simple alternative: follow her family, or work in an SS brothel behind the eastern front. She chooses to live, her Aryan looks allowing her to disguise the fact that she is Jewish. As the German army retreats from the Russian front, Hanka battles cold, hunger, fear and shame, sustained by her hatred for the men she entertains, her friendship with the mysterious Estelle, and her fierce, burning desire for life.

Lovely Green Eyes explores the compromises and sacrifices that an individual may make in order to survive, the way a woman can retain her identity in the face of appalling trauma, and the value of human life itself. This is a remarkable novel, which soars beyond nightmare, leaving the reader with a transcendent sense of hope.