Czech author Arnost Lustig dies aged 84

Czech author Arnost Lustig, a survivor of the Holocaust who later wrote about it in his fiction, has died aged 84.

The writer, whose novels included A Prayer for Katerina Horowitzova and Darkness Casts No Shadow, had been suffering from cancer for five years.

Born in Prague in 1926, Lustig survived Auschwitz and two other Nazi camps before managing to escape from a train that was taking him to Dachau in 1945.

His novel Lovely Green Eyes was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.

Born into a Jewish family, Lustig was sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942.

He was transferred to Auchwitz and Buchenwald two years later before escaping in the spring of 1945.

Returning to Prague he took part in a Nazi uprising. After the war he worked as a reporter, covering the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

Lustig left Czechoslovakia during the Soviet occupation in 1968, eventually settling in the US.

He returned to Prague after the fall of Communism, remaining there until his death on Saturday.