Shop on the Corniche - The Bride - From the Hell of Happiness

The first volume of the writings brings two famous novels and a little-known novel from the period of the Slovak state, set in a small town under Vihorlat, where Jewish and Christian communities live side by side in an atmosphere of advancing fascism. The Shop on the Waterfront, which was made into a film by directors Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos and won an American Oscar, is a drama of a simple man caught in the machinery of the new order. Similarly, in the story of an ageing girl in the novel The Bride, who gets married under very unusual conditions. In the novel From the Hell of Happiness, a twelve-year-old boy is smuggled into Hungary to stay with relatives in the belief that he will be safer, and there, armed only with his knowledge of rhodocaps and the Red Library, he will go through the horrors of war. This gripping novel, which mixes tragedy, humour and poetry, is based on a true story.