LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 13, 15 July 1939, Page 20

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

In their announcement of Miss Kosemary Rees's new novel, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, the publishers (says our London correspondent on June 1) refer to this New Zealand writer as "perhaps the most popular romantic novelist of the day. Don't fail to read her latest book—'You'll Never Fail Me.'" The lazy man's perfect foreign! "phrase book" has been published by Collins. Actually it is not a phrase) book at all, but a perfect-size production full of pictures of any article you are likely to want when on holiday abroad. The sketches are arranged in sections—food, drink, air travel, medical, tobacconist, and so forth— and all you have got to do is to look up the appropriate sketch and point it out to the foreigner. Each article sketched is named in six languages. A Japanese best-seller is an unfamiliar idea—but it is soon to make its appearance at London. Putnam announces for early publication a series of Japanese war novels by the popular writer Ashihei Hino: Sea and Soldier." "Mud and Soldier," "Flower and Soldier," and the famous "Wheat and Soldier." of which more than half a million copies have been sold in Japan. The whole work, translated by Lewis W. Bish, will _be published in one volume, called War and Soldier." Lord David Cecil's "The Young Melbourne" still leads the best-sellers in London. ' Bu* "Poems from Spam, edited by Mr. Stephen Spender and Mr. John Lehmann, Dr. Gogarty's "Tumbling in the Hay," and Professor Seton-Watson's "Munich and the Dictators," Monsignor Ronald Knox's "Let" Dons Delight" and "The Art of Glass," published by the Phaidon Press, have all found their public. In fiction, Mr. Somerset Maugham s "Christmas Holiday" Leads, and Mr. Christopher Isherwood's "Good-bye, Berlin," Mrs. Angela Thirkell's "The Brandons," Mr. Erskine Caldwell's "Dynasty of Death," Miss Ivy Comp-ton-Burnett's "A Family and a Fortune," and "Rabble in Arms," by Mr. 1 Kenneth Roberts, all go well, too. According to reports from Poland, Rumania, and Greece, an unexpected revival of interest in English literature is taking place in Eastern and South-eastern Europe. Notwithstanding the comparatively high prices of English books and the high rate of exchange, books from this country are coming to be regarded as. "best sellers." Especially in Hungary, the English novel seems to have become the grande mode of the season, and the number of translations as well as original English novels sold is attaining record figures. Some Budapest newspapers, responding to the fashion, have introduced, for the benefit of their readers not very well versed in things English, regular columns in which unfamiliar terms relating to everyday life in Great Britain are translated and explained. An unexpected compliment to English culinary art is being paid by a Hungarian daily, which publishes weekly English cooking recipes.