THREE SHORT NOVELS

By the author of the much lauded Silence of the Sea, here are three stories interrelated by their theme- the spiritual devastation of war. Very French in their expressed emotionalism, they will seem too fervent for some tastes.... Guiding Star is the story of Bohemian born Thomas Muritz, who as a boy worships the concept of liberty, fraternity, which symbolizes France. He leaves home to go to France, only to die in disillusion at the hands of a French firing squad- not German. Night and Fog concerns the irreparable damage done to Pierre, in a concentration camp, from which he returns strange, silent, after the emotional as well as the physical brutalization of his experiences. The Verdun Press is the story of a printer, a veteran of Verdun, whose sense of liberty and independence is assailed by the Vichy laws which affect him directly as his partner, a Jew, is their victim...Strong sentimentality here, a proud patriotism -- but an American audience is not assured.