New Fiction

Press, Volume C, Issue 29513, 13 May 1961, Page 3

New Fiction

The Russians. By Stephan Strogof. Muller. 176 pp.

Stephan Strogoff's novel has been greatly admired in France and is now translated into English by Constantine Fitz Gibbon. Whether it will greatly appeal to readers of a more phlegmatic type is questionable. To begin with the intensity of the style in which it is written suggests emotional extravagance. One example, from page 88. may be quoted. “Without having really lived, it seemed to Anton as though he had survived his own death and much else as well. More than his own death. . . . . . . And now he would go on living, even though his would be a strange life.” Anton Sviriagin, after the great German invasion and disaster in Russia, could never settle down in a countryside pitted with shellholes and spiritually desolate. He himself had his own load of guilt, for as a prisoner he had served the Germans, acted as their interpreter and watched them torture their victims. Together with his wife Marina whom, by a miracle, he found again, he went off to the Arctic north to find a new life far from the contamination of society. What follows is a chronicle of suffering, birth and death. “The Russian” ends in unrelieved gloom. It is almost like a caricature of a Russian novel. Some Kind of Grace, By Robin Jenkins. Macdonald. 254 pp. Mr Jenkins has written a most unusual novel. Margaret Duncan and Donald Kemp travelling together in Afghanistan suddenly disappear. The authorities discover that they have been murdered, and in due course justice is done and Jhe case is closed. But John' McLeod who has lived in Afghanistan and knows how affairs are managed there is dissatisfied. He had known Donald Kemp very well, so he resolves to make some investigations for himself. As it turns out his suspicions were justified: but when he finds the couple in a remote mountain village Kemp is dying and Margaret is the victim of a semi-religious, mania. She will never return into civilisation. When John McLeod himself gets back to Kabul he is in a strangely chastened frame of mind. “Some Kind of Grace" must be described as original and disturbing.