The Cremator

"The devil's neatest trick is to persuade us that he doesn't exist."--Giovanni Papini

It is a maxim that both rings true in our contemporary world and pervades this tragicomic novel of anxiety and evil set amid the horrors of World War II. As a gay man living in a totalitarian, patriarchal society, noted Czech writer Ladislav Fuks identified with the tragic fate of his Jewish countrymen during the Holocaust. The Cremator arises from that shared experience. Fuks presents a grotesque, dystopian world in which a dutiful father, following the strict logic of his time, liberates the souls of his loved ones by destroying their bodies--first the dead, then the living. As we watch this very human character--a character who never ceases to believe that he is doing good--become possessed by an inhuman ideology, the evil that initially permeates the novel's atmosphere concretizes in this familiar family man. A study of the totalitarian mindset with stunning resonance for today, The Cremator is a disturbing, powerful work of literary horror.

Ladislav Fuks (1923-94) was a Czech writer of primarily psychological fiction. His novels include Mr. Theodore Mundstock. Eva M. Kandler is a translator of Czech origin who has lived in the United Kingdom since the 1960s. Rajendra A. Chitnis is a senior lecturer in Czech, Slovak, and Russian literature at the University of Bristol, UK.