NEW FICTION

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27564, 22 January 1955, Page 3

NEW FICTION

Tents Against the Sky. By Robert Ekvall. Gollancz. 264 pp.

In an outstanding book about Tibet, a country where he spent many years, Mr Ekvall gave a most vivid picture of a remote and little known place. Now he writes about Tibet again but this time in npvel form. Dorje Richen, the youngest son of a family of nomadic herdsmen, is dedicated by his parents to God and enters a Buddhist monastery at the age of seven. As he grows older he realises that he must adjust his outlook to the patterns of thought that have already been chosen for him, and with some intellectual effort it appears that he is going to succeed. At the moment when he feels himself safest and his monastic career seems to be his whole life, a chance circumstance causes him

to leave his monastery temporarily. There he meets Lhamo, a girl from a neighbouring tribe, and he breaks his vow of chastity. Unable to return to the monastery, he takes up life with his own people again and becomes a noted huntsman. In a tribal quarrel he breaks his second vow—to refrain from taking life. Materially he prospers, but still a deeply spiritual man, he is haunted by his broken vows. He tries all means of escape, even a pilgrimage to Lhasa, but inner peace still remains elusive. Finally he meets a Christian missionary who converts him. Mr Ekvall has done two things very well. He has given once more a brilliant picture of a place. The background to his story is full of the richness of a complicated and elaborate folklore and of 'the excitement as well as the hardship of the herdsmen’s life. Also, he has succeeded with integrity and * plausibility in sketching the character of a man in the struggles of a spiritual conflict. Johannesburg Friday. By Albert Segal. Geoffrey Bles. 341 pp. This is the story of a day in the life of a Johannesburg family. Against an almost, but, not quite, overwhelmingly crowded picture of the city’s life from daybreak to night, it tells the past and hints at the present of this middle-class family, the Leventhals. The reader will perhaps wonder whether the book has turned out as the author intended. As might be expected, there is a good deal in it about the colour problem, .but curiously this appears of little consequence and a minor issue that never quite holds the attention. Deliberately or not, the book becomes above all the story of a Jewish family who are striving to hold to their orthodoxy. London or any other European city might just as easily be the setting for the account of their relations with non-Jews and their attempt to preserve the integrity of their own beliefs. Mr Segal handles this theme with surprising interest and sensitivity. It is a first novel, but he is obviously a writer of promise. As a creator of character and an interpreter of situations and motives, he is most talented, combining a remarkable gift of observation with a telling power of expression. The form of his novel is perhaps not quite so satisfactory. He chooses to narrate the separate days of four members of the family and only the slenderest of threads binds the narrative together. It does not fail, but a more unified form would have probably given more fullness to the story. A less insistent attempt to crowd so many of the city problems into the story might have been wiser. As it is, they never become sufficiently alive to hold our attention and at times distract our emotions. . But as the story of a family it is a most satisfying and absorbing book.

The Unhurrying Chase. By H. F. M. Prescott Eyre and Spottiswoode. 287 pp. Miss Prescott’s outstanding book “The Man on a Donkey” and her later “Jerusalem Journey” have aroused considerable interest in her work. “The Unhurrying Chase” is a republication of an earlier work and is set .in twelfth century France. In describing the fortunes of her hero, Yves de Rifaucip, a small landowner deprived of possessions in a raid by Richard of Poitu, Miss Prescott paints not only a most brilliant historical picture but also tells with considerable powers of imagination and insight the story of a man driven by a spiritual conflict to desperation. Yves hopes that hisjoverlord will recover his little fief for him and when he fails to even try to do this, he offers his services elsewhere ° n ty_ to fin d that no one wants a landless man who has not even been knighted. Bitter and unhappy, he concentrates his hate on the idea of Richard of Poitu. His hate for Richard is bound up with his hate for God who demands, he feels, unquestioning acceptance of his lot. He sinks lower and lower in degradation and finally finds himself enlisted as a router or mercenary. Against the background of the petty feudal wars of the struggle between the church and secular powers we 'follow Yves as he hunts Richard and at the same time tries to escape from the hunter, God. It is a most powerfully written book whose vividness is at times almost distressing. Only a writer who combined a deep historical knowledge and a sense of the past with unusual gifts of style and dramatic sense could have written it. Brother Man. By Roger Mais. Jonathan Cape. 191 pp. This powerful story of a very good man is set in the slums of a city in Jamaica. The characters are all negroes. Brother Man, a cobbler by trade, is an eccentric in a community ridden with superstition. It is an ugly environment, in which as gentle a creature as Brother Man, whose life is ruled by deep religious feeling, seems strangely out of place. The author’s touch is as deft and sure in his verbal delineation of character and episode as it is in the drawings with which he illustrates his moving story. The Laughing Matter. By William Saroyan. Faber and Faber. 220 pp.

But it is not a laughing matter; it is a tragedy that comes between a man and his wife, who deeply love each other and their two children. It is the tragic story of the struggle of a man with his pride and a woman with her conscience, struggles which both lose in their own ways, with sadness for all concerned. William Saroyan is a master story-teller.