Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Good book April 7, 2008
I would recommend this book to anyone. Even if you think you don't like reading about history, you'll like this book. In fact, it is books like these that are the reason I love history so much, and why I'm majoring in it. It isn't about the politics or the wars or whatever else (although those are certainly important), it is the story of a woman trying to survive through a hell most of us cannot even imagine has existed on this earth, especially not in the last 50 years. Peoples' lives are what connect us to the past, and what make it relevant to the future. It gives a little meaning and heart behind all the dates and events that you have to memorize in class...make them more personal. And furthermore, you will be inspired by this woman. Her strength and character is admirable, to say the very least. Actually, I don't think even a fictional writer could invent a heroine more honorable than this one.
So please, read it. stories like these deserve to be shared.
 great February 15, 2008
it is a great book use in my world civ class, and highly recommmand by my professor and TAs.
Prague Farewell February 9, 2008
Clive James, in "Cultural Amnsia' - his magesterial review of literature and totalitarianism - said: "Given thirty seconds to recommend a single book that might start a serious young student on the hard road to understanding of the political tragedies of the twentieth century, I would choose this one". It tells a remarkable personal tale of a Jewish girl in Prague caught up by the Nazis and going to Auschwitz, then her escape and return to her beloved Prague, and subsequent worse sufferings under the communist government in the 1950s and 1960s. Her husband was a high ranking government official but later was put on a show trial and killed.
"Under a Cruel Star" (also called "Prague Farewell" in some editions) is not as bleak as the story sounds. It is a slim volume of hope and understanding, written elegantly by a woman who later in life worked as a translator from English and finished her working life in the Harvard Law School library.
Great - but could have been even better September 27, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As good as this book is, it could have been much better. Kovaly has a fascinating story to tell but too much of her story tells how this happened and then that happened without enough analysis or explanation. Kovaly lived through Hitler and Stalin and she has an amazing story to tell.
The book starts with the deportation of the Jews from Prague, where Kovaly lived, to the ghetto of Lodz in Poland. She describes the horrors and the death she encountered there. She then skips ahead to the last concentration/slave labor camp she was in before the war ended. She describes how she tells the German man who runs the factory about the extermination camps, a topic with which he seems to be utterly unfamiliar. And although the part she tells us is fascinating, she leaves out much of the story that she tells him. Finally she tells us of her escape as she is being marched away from the advancing Russian armies, her return to Prague, and her rejection by all the friends she had left behind. By far this is the best part of the book.
But this part ends sixty pages into the book and she has much more to tell us. After the war, Kovaly marries the man she always loved and he becomes a member of the Czech communist party and eventually a minister in the government. With the failures of communism, a scapegoat is needed by the government and her husband is arrested and executed as a traitor as part of the Slansky trials. As the widow of a traitor, her life in Prague is hell but she spends her every effort to care for her child and to rehabilitate her husband. Finally, in the early 1960's, reforms in Czechoslovakia led to her husband and all the others having their convictions overturned. The reforms continue until the Prague Spring of 1968 leading to the Russian invasion and the crushing of the new freedoms. At this point Kovaly flees for the West to join her son who is living in London.
The book is short at less than 200 pages and many things happen so the story moves quickly. But too much of the story tells us what happened as a way for Kovaly to avoid talking about herself. For example, by starting with the deportations, we learn nothing about Kovaly's life before the Nazis. Kovaly doesn't even tell us how old she was or what she was doing when she was rounded up. With all Kovaly has been through she has had to have built a wall to protect herself and she only shows us glimpses through that wall. But the book still remains an amazing story of the holocaust and the early communist years in Czechoslovakia. Her glimpses into how communism must always fail by its very nature from someone who was on the inside are worth reading to help us understand the 20th century. Kovaly leaves out the happy ending she finally achieved. It is a happy ending she deserves.
Under A Cruel Star & Reflections of Prague August 7, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
My mother's book, in print since 1973 under various titles, the last being 'Under A Cruel Star', inspired me to write my own side of the story about my lost father, JUDr Rudolf Margolius. Now published and called 'Reflections of Prague: Journeys through the 20th century' it fills gaps in my mother's book provided by further research and historical information, some of which was not available to her and which many readers of her book had asked us for over the years. Hopefully this companion volume provides answers to these questions. I hope you find this book interesting and would welcome your feedback.
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