Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968 was published first under this title by Plunkett Lake Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1986. The memoir was written by Heda Margolius Kovály and translated with Francis and Helen Epstein. It is now available in a Holmes & Meier, New York 1997 edition, in a Plunkett Lake Press 2010 eBook edition and in a Granta, London 2012 edition (Prague Farewell was the book title in the UK in previous editions). The memoir was originally written in Czech and published in Canada under the title Na vlastní kůži by 68 Publishers in Toronto in 1973. An English translation appeared in the same year as the first part of the book The Victors and the Vanquished published by Horizon Press in New York. A British edition of the book excluded the second treatise and was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson under the title I Do Not Want To Remember in 1973.
Heda Margolius Kovály was born in Prague, spent the years of the Second World War in concentration camps, escaped from a death march and took part in the Prague Uprising against the Nazis in May 1945. After the war, she worked at various Prague publishing houses. In November 1952, her husband, Rudolf Margolius was convicted in the Soviet staged Slánský Trial and executed on December 3, 1952. She has translated number of books by distinguished German, British and American authors and written one novel Innocence (Nevina) in Czech in 1985.
In his book Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts (2007), Clive James admired Kovály's "psychological penetration and terse style" and bestowed a remarkable praise: “Given 30 seconds to recommend a single book that might start a serious student on the hard road to understanding the political tragedies of the 20th century, I would choose this one."
Other reviews of the book:
Anthony Lewis, New York Times: "Once in a while we read a book that puts the urgencies of our time and ourselves in perspective, making us confront the darker realities of human nature."
San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner: "A story of human spirit at its most indomitable … one of the outstanding autobiographies of the century."
Alfred Kazin: "An extraordinary memoir...written with so much quiet respect for the minutiae of justice and truth that one does not know where and how to specify Heda Kovály's splendidness as a human being... It is impossible to read her book without the deepest admiration for her quiet, fierce documentation of the ordeal of the Czech people in our time."
E. J. Graff, Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center, Columbia Journalism Review: "Under A Cruel Star is the most remarkable book for a variety of reasons: because Kovály has such a keen street sense for individual motivations; because her writing is so precise and beautiful: and, most of all, because she conveys such a ferocious and visceral sense that an individual life is just as important – and just as powerful – as governments, militaries, and political might."
New Statesman (UK): "A truly unforgettable book."
The Sunday Times (UK): "One does not ‘review’ a book like this. One weeps, and prays … Beautiful evocation of lovely Prague."
Josef Škvorecký: "Written with the sophistication of a litterateur and the immediacy of a survivor."