Chaim Cigan - about the author

photo by reflex.cz

Karol Efraim Sidon
(born August 9, 1942) is a Czech rabbi, writer and playwright. He is the Chief Rabbi of the city of Prague and of the Czech Republic.
Born in Prague during the war, Karol Sidon is a distant relative of rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld. His Jewish father Alexander Sidon came from Trnava, where was his great-uncle Shimon Sidon first rabbi after a long expulsion of Jews from city. Alexander was arrested in 1944 and imprisoned by the Gestapo in Pankrác and in Terezin, where he was tortured to death in the same year. Karol was then hidden away in the country until the end of the occupation. Mother raised him alone until 1948, when he re-married a Jew. His stepfather repeatedly escaped from the Terezin ghetto, Kladno mines, from Warsaw, Treblinka and the last of the Soviet gulag.
He began studying at the Academy of Musical Art in Prague in 1960 where he began writing film scripts, and radio plays for Czech public radio – Český rozhlas. Until 1968 he worked as a producer for Czech puppeteer Jiří Trnka. In the same year, Sidon’s first book, which became a cult book “Sen o mém otci” (“Dream about my father”) was published, in which the author deals with his being brought up without his Jewish father Alexander Sidon, who perished in the Terezín ghetto (his wife was a Christian). In 1977 he was a signatory to Charter 77. He received the Jiří Kolář prize in 1978. He was married to Marcela Třebická, and a father of the actors Daniel Sidon and Magdalena Sidonová.
In 1983 he emigrated to West Germany and he studied Jewish studies at the Heidelberg university. He became ordained as a Rabbi after studying for a time in Israel. He returned to the Czech Republic in 1992, where he became chief rabbi of Prague. Rabbi Sidon restored the Jewish Orthodox community. To help get invited many young rabbinical families from Israel. He founded the Lauder School (elementary school named Gur Aryeh and grammar s. Or Chadash), the construction of a mikveh, the establishment of a midrash Tiferet Uzi (named after his teacher Uzi Kalchheim), Beit Din or kosher shop and Certificates.
Works
Sen o mém otci, 1968, (Dream about My Father)
Sen o mně, 1970, (Dream about Myself)
Boží osten, 1975, (The Sting of God)
Brány mrazu, 1977, (Gates of Frost)
Dvě povídky o utopencích, 1988, (Two Stories about the Drowned People)
Gospel podle Josefa Flavia, 1974, (The Gospel According to Josephus Flavius)
Plays
Zákon, 1968, (The Law)
Labyrint (cirkus podle Komenského), 1972, (Labyrinth, Circus According to Comenius)
Shapira, 1972, (Shapira)
Zpívej mi na cestu, (Sing Me for the Trip)
Maringotka Zuzany Kočové, (Caravan of Zuzana Kočová)
Children’s books
Pohádky ze čtyř šuplíčků, 1979, (Fairy Tales from Four Drawers) (appeared under the name of his wife Marcela Třebická).
Chaim Cigan
Pseudonym Chaim Cigan is the name of one of his ancestors. “Altschulova Metoda,” Atschul’s Method is the first of four books (Piano live, Puzzle, Outsider) in a science fiction series “mixing politics, prison cells and the secret police with the Middle Ages, Moses and Jewish history – a science fiction thriller told across continents and epochs,”
Atschul’s Method (2014)
Piano live (2015)

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sidon/