Leopold Lahola The Last Thing review, recensie boek met verhalen van de schrijver uit Slowakije. Op 25 augustus 2025 verschijnt bij Karolinum Press de Engelse vertaling van Posledná vec het boek met verhalen van de Slowaakse schrijver Leopold Lahola. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.
Leopold Lahola The Last Thing review en recensie
- “Leopold Lahola was and remains a miracle of Slovak literature. Litetally! At the same time, his is the story of a writer who surpassed his countrymen so much that they temporarily forgot him. But only temporarily!” (Fedor Gál)
The Last Thing
- Auteur: Leopold Lahola (Slowakije)
- Soort boek: verhalen uit Slowakije
- Origineel: Posledná vec (1968)
- Engelse vertaling: Peter & Julia Sherwood
- Uitgever: Karolinum Press
- Verschijnt: 25 augustus 2025
- Omvang: 218 pagina’s
- Uitgave: paperback
- Prijs: $ 23,00
- Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris
Flaptekst met het boek van Leopold Lahola de Slowaaks Joodse schrijver
An English translation of Slovak Jewish writer Leopold Lahola’s collection of short stories that face the atrocities and paradoxes of World War II.
Slovak Jewish writer Leopold Lahola was able to escape deportation to a concentration camp and fight in the resistance only to find himself forced into exile by the postwar communist regime. He emerged from obscurity during the brief thaw of the Prague Spring, when he was able to return to his homeland and thrive as a playwright and film director. It was also in 1968 that his short story collection The Last Thing appeared in Slovakia. The collection’s title proved sadly prophetic with the author suffering a fatal heart attack in January 1968, just before his 50th birthday and as his short stories finally appeared in book form.
The nine stories which make up The Last Thing range from the prewar rise of fascism and its dangers for the Jewish community through the concentration camps and the partisan fight against the Germans, concluding in the devastating awareness of all that had been lost and destroyed in the war. Lahola is a master of writing outside of conventional tropes, exploring moral ambivalences where others work within the comforts of good versus evil. He punctures the standard historical image of the partisan fighters by depicting their heroism along with their cruelty and pettiness while also showing how often bravery and madness, kindness and stupidity can coexist. Lahola has written a World War II story collection whose translation will offer not only a compelling read but starkly new perspectives on the tragedy and grandeur of that momentous time in history.
Leopold Lahola was born on 30 january 1913 in Prešov, Slovakia as Leopold Arje Friedmann 1918. He was a Slovak Jewish fiction writer, playwright, and film director. He escaped deportation to a concentration camp and emigrated to Israel in 1949, where he worked in film before moving to West Germany. He was able to return home during the Prague Spring, when his plays were staged again in Czechoslovakia to critical acclaim. He died on 12 january 1968 in Bratislava, the Slovak capital at the age of 54.
