Jan Otčenášek (Prague 19 November 1924 - 24 February 1979) was a Czech novelist and playwright.[1]
Limping Orpheus (Kulhavý Orfeus) is a semiautobiographical description of resistance by a group of young people mobilised by the Germans as munitions workers in the Totaleinsatz. His most popular work Romeo, Juliet and Darkness (Romeo, Julie a tma), about a young couple during the Nazi occupation after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, was made into a film directed by Jiří Weiss and starring Ivan Mistrík, Daniela Smutná, and Jiřina Šejbalová in 1960, then set as an opera by the Soviet composer Kirill Molchanov in 1963.[2]