Jan Otčenášek

Jan Otčenášek (Prague 19 November 1924 - 24 February 1979) 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. 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, was in 1960 made into a film, directed by Jiří Weiss and starring Ivan Mistrík, Daniela Smutná, and Jiřina Šejbalová. In 1963 it was made into an opera by the Soviet composer Kirill Molchanov.