Zsuzsanna Ozsvath

Zsuzsanna Ozsváth comes from a large Hungarian Jewish family. She and her parents survived World War II and the Holocaust living in Budapest, an ordeal she described in her 2010 memoir, When the Danube Ran Red. When life and a career as a pianist in post-war Communist Hungary became impossible for her, she and her husband sought asylum in Germany. Her husband found a job at the University of Texas at Austin in 1962; a year later, they moved to the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies, which became the University of Texas at Dallas. There she earned a Ph.D. in German literature. She became Professor of Literature and the History of Ideas at the University, and Director of the School's Holocaust Studies Program. Her books include In the Footsteps of Orpheus: Life and Times of Miklós Radnóti (2000) and Foamy Sky: The Major Poems of Miklós Radnóti (with Frederick Turner, 1992). Her essays and translations have appeared in journals such as The Partisan Review and The Canadian American Review of Hungarian Studies. She is a co-recipient of the 1995 Milán Füst Prize of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, one of the most prestigious Hungarian literary awards.