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After his retirement from a US university in 2003, Arnost Lustig became a full-time resident of Prague and was given an apartment in the Czech capital’s Castle by then President Vaclav Havel.
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PRAGUE (AFP-EJP)---Czech author Arnost Lustig has been chosen as the eighth winner of the annual Franz Kafka international literary prize, the Czech association commemorating the famous Prague author announced Tuesday.
"The decision to award the prize to Lustig was taken by the jury," Daniela Uherkova of the Franz Kafka association said. He was selected by a 15-strong panel of world-renowned authors, she added.
The prize is co-sponsored by the Franz Kafka Society and the city of Prague.
Lustig follows in the footsteps of last year's winner, French poet Yves Bonnefoy. Previous recipients include British playwright Harold Pinter, Austrian Elfriede Jelinek, American author Philip Roth and Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.
Born in Prague into a Jewish family in 1926, Lustig was aged 16 when he and his family were sent in 1942 to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, from where he was later transported to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
He escaped a train taking him to the Dachau concentration camp at the end of World War II to return to Prague in time to take part in the May 1945 anti-Nazi uprising. His father died in Auschwitz.
Many of Lustig’s novels draw on his time in the death camps and immediately afterwards. His approach to the subject was new as he did not write about conventional heroics but concentrated on non-heroic types like old people and children.
Following the war, the twenty-year old Lustig studied journalism and also worked as a scriptwriter. He became a member of staff of the Czechoslovak radio and wrote articles for several newspapers, particularly for ‘Zidovský vestník’ (The Jewish Gazette). In 1948-1949 he was a war correspondent in Israel, which was at that time engaged in fighting for recognition as independence.
He left the then Czechoslovakia in 1968, first to Israel, then Yugoslavia and later in 1970 to the United States.
After the fall of eastern European communism in 1989, he divided his time between Prague and Washington where he continued to teach at a university. After his retirement from university in 2003, he became a full-time resident of Prague and was given an apartment in the Czech capital’s Castle by then President Vaclav Havel. He was also honoured for his contributions to Czech culture on his 80th birthday in 2006.
His novel 'Lovely Green Eyes' was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.
The Kafka prize is accompanied by a 10,000 dollar (6,400-euro) cheque.
