THREE REFUGEES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 117, 20 May 1939, Page 20

THREE REFUGEES

A good novel dealing with last year's European crisis is "Three Over the Frontier." The author, Hans iHabe, born in 1911, comes of : Hungarian family settled in Austria: One of his ancestors was the first Latin-German interpreter at the Court of Joseph 11, :■ and his greatgrandfather fought for Kossuth in the Hungarian War of Liberation. He is a journalist who has lived and worked in Geneva for many years. His novel is translated by Eric Sutton and published by Harrap. Over the German-Czechoslovak frontier come three refugees. Nora Geldern, the irresponsible, attractive young Jewess, escapes in her own car; Kiesler, the rich industrialist, finds an Englishman to help him; Richard Sergius, the Communist engineer, gets across by hiding under a pile of sacks in a lorry. These three, thrown together by circumstance, drift round Europe-rtq Prague, Vienna, Geneva, Paris, London—meet-, ing many others of their kind. In' this rich and exciting novel which has already been translated into several languages, Hans Habe, analyses with intelligence and understanding the feelings of these typical v exiles, and shows their growing distrust of each other, their lack of any common factor except that they are exiles. Moreover, he does not sentimentalise them; their hard lot drives them often to queer actions, such as Kiesler's *sale of Nora to the Englishman in London. But although the story epitomises the tragedy that is now overwhelming thousands of innocent people, it ends on a note of hope.