Jan Otčenášek was a Czech novelist and playwright.

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

Totaleinsatz

Totaleinsatz was a colloquial term of young Czechs for Forced labour under German rule during World War II. 400,000 Czechs worked as forced labour in Germany. This was a subset of the Arbeitseinsatz for German men but with ambiguity as to the status of Czechs under the "Protectorate" of Bohemia...

. 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

Reinhard Heydrich

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...

, was made into a film directed by Jiří Weiss and starring Ivan Mistrík, Daniela Smutná, and Jiřina Šejbalová

Jiřina Šejbalová

Jiřina Šejbalová was a Czech actress of the stage, television, and film. For many years she taught theatre classes at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts.Born in Prague, Šejbalová came from a family of clerks...

 in 1960, then set as an opera by the Soviet composer Kirill Molchanov

Kirill Molchanov

Kirill Vladimirovich Molchanov was a Russian and Soviet composer.He was appointed director of the Bolshoi, at the time political disfavour had fallen on the lead soprano Galina Vishnevskaya.His works are in the Social Realist romantic tradition and were not warmly received when performed...

in 1963.