Heda Margolius Kovaly (1919-2010) was a renowned Czech writer and
translator born to Jewish parents. Her bestselling memoir, Under a
Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 has been translated into
more than a dozen languages. Her crime novel Innocence; or, Murder
on Steep Street based on her own experiences living under Stalinist
oppression was named an NPR Best Book in 2015. In the tradition of
Studs Terkel, Hitler, Stalin and I is based on interviews between
Kovaly and award-winning filmmaker Helena Trestikova. In it, Kovaly
recounts her family history in Czechoslovakia, starving in the
deprivations of Lodz Ghetto, how she miraculously left Auschwitz,
fled from a death march, failed to find sanctuary amongst former
friends in Prague as a concentration camp escapee, and participated
in the liberation of Prague. Later under Communist rule, she
suffered extreme social isolation as a pariah after her first
husband Rudolf Margolius was unjustly accused in the infamous
Slansky Trial and executed for treason. Remarkably, Kovaly, exiled
in the United States after the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, only
had love for her country and continued to believe in its people.
She returned to Prague in 1996. Heda had an enormous talent for
expressing herself. She spoke with precision and was descriptive
and witty in places. I admired her attitude and composure, even
after she had such extremely difficult experiences. Nazism and
Communism afflicted Heda's life directly with maximum intensity.
Nevertheless, she remained an optimist. Helena Trestikova has made
over fifty documentary films. Hitler, Stalin and I has garnered
several awards in the Czech Republic and Japan. PRAISE FOR KOVALY'S
INNOCENCE A luminous testament from a dark time, Innocence is at
once a clever homage to Raymond Chandler, and a portrait of a city
- Prague - caught and held fast in a state of Kafkaesque paranoia.
Only a great survivor could have written such a book. - John
Banville Innocence is an extraordinary novel ... in 1985, Kovaly
produced a remarkable work of art with the intrigue of a spy
puzzle, the irony of a political fable, the shrewdness of a novel
of manners, and the toughness of a hard-boiled murder mystery ...
Just as few will anticipate the many surprises and artful turns of
Innocence, a book sure to dazzle and please a great many readers. -
Tom Nolan, The Best New Mysteries, The Wall Street Journal Kovaly's
skills as a mystery writer shines, as she uses suspense, hints, and
suggestions to literally play with the reader's mind ... Innocence
is an excellent novel for readers who are up for a challenging,
intelligent, and complex story - one that paints a masterful
picture of a bleak, Kafkaesque, and highly intriguing time, place,
and cast of characters. - The New York Journal of Books Although
not out of love for Hegel, Heda Margolius Kovaly makes a very
Hegelian point: actions, as Hegel tells us in the section on
Antigone in Phenomenology of Spirit - even seemingly small,
meaningless actions - always reach beyond their intent; and the
impossibility of foreseeing how the consequences will ripple
outwards does not absolve us of guilt. As for innocence, the woman
who went to hell twice wants her readers to know that there is no
such thing. - The Times Literary Supplement
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