Circus come to town [antikvár]

Albert Mallz-American dramatist, novelist, scriptwriter and author of short stories--was born in New York ín 1908. Al a child he Uved in one of the immigrants' quarters of this city. So he came to know very early both faces of New York and of America- light and luxury on the one hand and poverty and misery on the other. Maltz aUended the high school and studied drama at Yale University for two years. He bogán writing in the thirties. He wrote plays, novels and short stories full of social criticism. One of kis best-known works is the növel " The Cross and the Arrow", a book about an ordinary Germán worker who comes to take action against his Nazi rulers during the Sooond World Wor. This book was published in 1944. In the forties Maltz was one of the most successful Hollywood scriptwriters. But when in 1950-because of his progressive political attitűdé-the " Committee for Unamerican Activities" sentenced him to one year imprisonment together with nine other Hollywood authors, work became very difficult for him in the U.S.A. So he went into voluntary exile in Mexico, where he lived from 1951 to 1962. Now he is living in California. Albert Maltz is a talented short story writer. He describes with great sympathy and understanding the life and everyday problems of simple American people. Time and again his stories deal with the years of the Depression which brought hunger and un* employment for millions of Americans. Michael Gold, dean of the proletarian writers of America, wrote in his introduction to a book of short stories by Albert Maltz: "Shelley once said of himself that he was a nerve along which crept all the vast suffering of the poor, otherwise unseen and unrecorded. This might serve as one de fin it ion of a proletarian writer. and it describes particularly the short stories of Albert Maltz"