Sink or Swim

Sink or Swim is a story based on diaries of Pavol Valiska (author’s great-grandfather) written during and after World War One.
Pavol Valiska was born on the 28th of November 1896 in the village of Palin the east of Slovakia where he studied to become a shoemaker.
In 1914, when the WWI began, he volunteered to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army. He was captured by the Russian forces in the same year after a short time in the battlefield and then was taken to the far east of Russia to a working camp. This is where the story starts and follows the next nine years of Pavol’s life in various working camps in different parts of Russia, his direct experience of the hostility of the war, life in imprisonment, but also of kindness and love.
For the most authentic reader’s experience possible, minimum of editing and styling is done to the original diaries to let the main character tell his story in his own words.