LOVELY GREEN EYES

The latest (2000) novel from the Czech author of more than a dozen fictional treatments of the Holocaust and its aftershocks tells the grim story of 15-year-old Hanka Kaudersová, who survives Auschwitz by serving as a prostitute for its Nazi masters. The intense narrative focuses as well on both a thoughtful German officer who lectures Hanka about the “beauty” of slaughter and on an impotent sadomasochist who’s Hitlerism incarnate, then follows Hanka through war’s end, repentance for her “sins,” and salvation via marriage. Lustig’s penchants for abstract and flat statement dilute his story’s force. But Lovely Green Eyes does rein in a lot of the hyperbole that marred much of his earlier fiction; as a result, this is one of this very uneven writer’s better efforts.