The Sorrowful Eyes of Hannah Karajich is a lyrical, deeply moving story of love and the pain of emancipation, set in the now vanished world of rural East European Jewish village life. Hanna is the most beautiful girl in all Polona, a Hasidic community in the remote province of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. Involvement in the exciting new movement of Zionism takes her away to a commune in a nearby town. But there she meets and falls in love with the strangely named Ivo Karajich: a Jew, yet not a Jew. The agonizing drama that follows, plants into her beautiful almond-shaped eyes the hard grain of sorrow that her children, too, will inherit.

Olbracht's novella is both a great love story and a marvellous portrait of a world that modernity threatened and Hitler destroyed.

About the Author
Ivan Olbracht (1882-1952) was a Czech novelist and journalist. His best known novels carry Freudian overtones. Although not his homeland, Ruthenia, the easternmost, backward and rural part of what was then Czechoslovakia motivated Olbracht to create sophisticated contemporary ballads, modern myths with folkore elements.

Reviews

"The translation by Urwin Lewitova preserves the atmosphere and tone of the original and has lost none of its power since it was first published in 1964. The introduction by Czech poet and essayist Miroslav Holub, written shortly before his untimely death in 1998 is an informative and insightful introduction to Olbracht, his post-communist literary reputation, and the Ruthenian Jews."

* Slavic and East European Journal *

"...a book like this is truly a gift. ...The story of Hannah was ranked ninth on the list of 'the century's best Czech books' in a recent poll."

* Critique *



Book Information
ISBN 9789639116474
Author Ivan Olbracht
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint Central European University Press
Publisher Central European University Press
Weight(grams) 290g