The Shop on Main Street (Modern Czech Classics)

Ladislav Grosman, Iris Urwin Lewitová (Translated by)

$12.00

Publication Date: November 16th, 2019

Publisher:

Karolinum Press, Charles University

ISBN:

9788024640228

Pages:

150

Description

Written by a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, The Shop on Main Street is the story that inspired the highly successful Academy Award–winning Czechoslovak film of the same title. Looking at the Holocaust through the eyes of a complicit individual, the narrative follows a good-natured carpenter living in a Slovak town in 1942 who unwittingly becomes a participant in a moral crisis involving the abuse and persecution of Jews. Describing the film adaptation of Ladislav Grosman’s novel, the New York Times declared that it is a “human drama that is a moving manifest of the dark dilemma that confronted all people who were caught as witnesses to Hitler's terrible crime.” The review continues: “‘Is one his brother's keeper?’ is the thundering question the situation asks, and then, ‘Are not all men brothers?’ The answer given is a grim acknowledgement. But the unfolding of the drama is simple, done in casual, homely, humorous terms—until the terrible, heartbreaking resolution of the issue at the end.”

About the Author

Ladislav Grosman (1921–81) was born in Humenné, Slovakia to a Jewish family; because of this he spent two years of World War II in a forced labor camp. After the war he moved to Prague to study, eventually earning a doctorate in psychology before turning his attention to writing fiction and screenplays. Shortly after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he emigrated to Israel, where he would spend the rest of his days teaching Slavic literature and creative writing at Bar-Ilan University. Iris Urwin Lewitová (1916–2008) was born in Pontypridd, Wales; after World War II she moved to Prague with her Czech husband. In addition to working as a lecturer in the English Department of Charles University, she was a prolific translator of Czech literary and academic texts. Mark Corner is a prize-winning translator of Czech literature and professor who has taught history, religion, political science, philosophy and European studies at the University of Newcastle, Charles University, the University of Leuven, the Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, and Vesalius College.

Praise for The Shop on Main Street (Modern Czech Classics)

“A simple Slovak carpenter is caught up in the activities of the fascist Hlinka Guard. This comical and terrifying portrait is both banal and transcendent. That is, The Shop on Main Street is narrated in such a style of which dreams and daily life are made; it circles the unanswerable question that, nonetheless, demands an answer: what are you willing to risk to recognize the humanity of your neighbor? A question that has, unfortunately, become increasingly relevant today.”
— Marcela Sulak, Bar-Ilan University

“Along with Škvorecký and Fuks, Grosman belongs to the key authors of Czech postwar literature dealing with the Holocaust. Written with great sensitivity and attention to the little people, The Shop on Main Street examines the actions of an ordinary man in extraordinary times.”
— Anna Hájková, University of Warwick

“Grosman’s short novel The Trap, later called The Shop on Main Street, attracted Klos and myself by its special angle of truthfulness, the tragicomedy of the story, and the author’s humanistic approach.”
— Ján Kádar, codirector of the Academy Award–winning film adaptation of Grosman’s "The Shop on Main Street"