Heda Margolius Kovaly (1919–2010)
Autore di Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968
Sull'Autore
Heda Margolius Kovály was a Czech memoirist and translator. She was born Heda Bloch in Prague Czechoslovakia in 1919, where she lived with her family until 1941, when they were rounded up with the city's Jewish population and taken to the Lodz Ghetto in central Poland. She was separated from her mostra altro parents when they were taken out of the ghetto and transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. She was chosen to survive and sent to work in the Christianstadt labor camp, but her parents were immediately gassed. When Soviet troops approached the camp, prisoners were evacuated and she managed to escape back to Prague. Between 1958 and 1989, she translated German, British and American fiction into Czech and would eventually become recognized as one of Czechoslovakia's leading literary translators, known for her interpretations of novels by Arnold Zweig, Heinrich Böll, William Golding, Muriel Spark, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, H. G. Wells and John Steinbeck. Her translations of Raymond Chandler inspired her to write a detective novel in Czech, "Nevina" ("Innocence"). When Soviet troops once again invaded Prague, Margolius Kovály fled to the United States, and she would eventually work as a reference librarian in the Harvard Law School Library at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An English translation of her memoir appeared as part of the book, The Victors and the Vanquished, and separately under the title I Do Not Want to Remember, in 1973. She re-published her memoir entitled Under a Cruel Star - A life in Prague 1941-1968. In 1985 she published her novel, Nevina (Innocence). The English translation was published by Soho Press in 2015. Margolius Kovály died in Prague, at the age of 91, after a long illness. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno
Opere di Heda Margolius Kovaly
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Informazioni generali
- Nome legale
- Kovaly, Heda Bloch Margolius
- Altri nomi
- Bloch, Heda (birth name)
- Data di nascita
- 1919-09-15
- Data di morte
- 2010-12-05
- Luogo di sepoltura
- New Jewish Cemetery, Prague, Czech Republic
- Sesso
- female
- Nazionalità
- Czech Republic
- Luogo di nascita
- Prague, Czechoslovakia
- Luogo di morte
- Prague, Czech Republic
- Luogo di residenza
- USA
- Attività lavorative
- writer
translator
librarian
memoirist
novelist
Holocaust survivor - Relazioni
- Margolius, Ivan (son)
- Breve biografia
- Heda Margolius Kovály was born Heda Bloch in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She married her childhood sweetheart, Rudolf Margolius. In 1941, after Nazi Germany invaded her homeland in World War II, she and her family were sent to the Łódź Ghetto in Poland. From the ghetto, they were deported to the death camp at Auschwitz. There her parents were murdered, and she was selected to work in the forced labor camp at Christianstadt. As the Red Army approached from the East in 1945, the prisoners were forced on a death march to Bergen-Belsen. Heda escaped and returned to Prague, where she was eventually reunited with her husband. In 1952, he was unjustly convicted of conspiracy during the notorious Slánský trial and executed. As the wife of an "enemy of the people," Heda lost her job and her apartment, and was then shunned for being unemployed and homeless. For as long as the Communist Party remained in power, she did not dare tell her son Ivan Margolius the truth about what had happened to his father. In 1955, she remarried to Pavel Kovály, a lecturer in philosophy. Under his surname, she became a well-known translator of works in German and English into the Czech language, including works by Arnold Zweig, Heinrich Böll, Raymond Chandler, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Muriel Spark, William Golding, John Steinbeck, and H.G. Wells. When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia after the "Prague Spring" of 1968, the couple fled to the USA. She worked for years as a reference librarian at the Harvard University Law School. Her own memoir, Na vlastní kůži (English translation, Under A Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941–1968; originally known as The Victors and the Vanquished; in the UK first as I Do Not Want to Remember and in 1988 as Prague Farewell) was originally published in 1973. It has been republished several times and translated into many languages, including Chinese, Danish, Romanian, German, Dutch, Norwegian, and Japanese. She also wrote a detective novel called Nevina (Innocence, 1985). She and her second husband returned to Prague in 1996 to retire. She participated in the making of the documentary film A Trial in Prague, directed by Zuzana Justman.
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Statistiche
- Opere
- 8
- Utenti
- 528
- Popolarità
- #47,121
- Voto
- 4.1
- Recensioni
- 11
- ISBN
- 24
- Lingue
- 6
- Preferito da
- 1
Tras permanecer oculta en Praga hasta el final de la guerra, en 1945 consiguió reunirse con su novio Rudolf Margolius, que también había sobrevivido a los campos, y con quien se casaría poco después. En 1952, Margolius era secretario de Estado de Comercio Exterior del gobierno comunista checoslovaco cuando, en una de las primeras purgas estalinistas, fue acusado junto a otros trece miembros del gobierno de alta traición. Once de ellos, incluido Margolius, fueron condenados a muerte. Tras su muerte, heda Kovály y su hijo fueron repudiados por el establishment y se vieron obligados a llevar una vida precaria durante años.… (altro)