WALTER DURANTY’S FIRST NOVEL

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 190, 8 May 1937, Page 7 (Supplement)

WALTER DURANTY’S FIRST NOVEL

“One Life. One Kopeck.” by Walter Duranty. I London': Hamish Hamilton. ) To newspapermen and a great many Americans Walter Duranty i.s known for his brilliant wor 1 ' for nearly 20 years as Moscow correspondent of the “New York Times”; to a further circle of readers which includes more people outside the United States lie is known also as the author of “I Write as I Please,” a book dealing with his own experiences and observations. Now Mr. Duranty, who, by the way, is an Englishman and is not a Communist, has broken new ground with a novel. As the title suggests, the book is set in lhe Russia Mr. Duranty has come to know so well. This knowledge of Russia he has turned to good account in a book in which every character is Russian and in which they are typically Russian. Mr. Duranty’s hero is a young Bolshevik who as a boy had suffered cruelty and hardships, and the action of the story takes place in the war years preceding tlie Russian revolution and in the time immediately after the upheaval. Ivan goes to the. war in order that hi.s military knowledge may become useful to his party, and then fights for the Bolsheviks when the revolution comes . Later he is leader of a band of Red troops fighting for existence in country mostly held by white Russians. There is much that is stark lu this book, but political considerations altogether apart, Mr. Duranty has written a talc full of exciting action from start to finish. Writing in the terse, rapidfire style of many American journalists be wastes uo words: on padding or unimportant details, and something is happening all the while. Ivan’s life is a .series of adventures and narrow escapes in which blood flows freely and in which Ivan’s career as a revolutionary is complicated by his love for an aristocrat who has no sympathy with his side. It ends with Ivan and Nina standing in the grounds of a bouse, which is the headquarters of the white Russians in a town which Ivan’s men a..‘ attacking, as Ivan sets off a ebarge of explosives that blows the house skyhigh. What their fate is we are not ‘old. If they or Ivan had a miraculous escape, maybo Mr. Duranty will take up tie story again in another book.