Arnošt Lustig

When a group of hedonistic West European tourists gather to celebrate Christmas in a remote French chateau, an English woman is murdered. Tatiana, 'the unloved child', declares she knows who did it. The subsequent inquiry into the death proves to be more of an investigation into the nature of love, insatiable rage and sadistic desire, framed within an unfolding narrative of colonial violence which will change the tourists' version of history for ever. The Unloved is a pivotal novel in Levy's career, first published in 1994 and reissued now for a new generation of readers.

With the Second World War "at the fringes and uneasy borders of his characters," the author tells of "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 [as they] lose themselves in a world of cruelty and collapsing social order while their inner worlds teem with the fascination of life--sexual fantasy, naive idealism, vengefulness, inchoate visions of justice."--Jacket.

"The Bitter Smell of Almonds brings together for the first time Arnost Lustig's short-story collection Street of Lost Brothers, the novel Dita Saxova, and the novellas of Indecent Dreams. The works in this omnibus edition reverberate with the torments of suffering and survival, loss and contradiction. Lustig's themes are as old and as universal as humankind's search for the meaning of existence, and his characters, often confronted with people or situations they cannot comprehend, attempt to come to terms with the unthinkable and with life itself."--BOOK JACKET.

A 17 year old survivor yearns for normality, to experience love and life. the scars of experience prevent her from letting down her Guard. age Ya-17+.