INTERNATIONAL SET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 663, 21 March 1952, Page 13

INTERNATIONAL SET

AND DELILAH, by Neil Paterson; Hodder and Stoughton.’ English price, 10/6. ARGO, by George Theotokas, translated from the Greek by E. M. Brooke and A. Tsatsopoulos; Methuen. English price, 12/6. THE DOG STAR, by Donald Windham; HartDavis, English price, 12/6. APHRA BEHN, by Emily Hahn; Jonathan Cape. Enfglish price, 12/6. "| HESE four books were written by a Scot, a Greek and two Americans. And Delilah is the third book from a Scottish novelist whose first novel was selected by Somerset Maugham as the book of the year 1949. The new collection of short. stories is dedicated to Maugham. Like the world they describe, these nine tales of prize-ring, circus, theatre and bull-ring provide professional entertainment. They are like the stories one used to read in the old Strand, stories of plot and sharply-drawn character, Such work may not sound the depths of New Writing fiction, but, oh, the bright surface! Argo describes life in Athens University between the two wars. It is half family chronicle, half political novel, Galsworthy plus Koestler in Greek draperies. The Dog Star also has Greek affiliations. Donald Windham attempts to give tone to his story of an American delinquent by some fancy references to the legend of Actaeon. Actually, his hero Blackie is a first cousin to Grahame Green’s Pinkie, but less impressive. There is a latter-day sentimentality about vice which makes Victorian. sentimentality about virtue seem Almost healthy. ; Emily Hahn in Aphra Behn is not the same ‘cheerfully astringent Emily who writes in the New Yorker. Just as English writers in U.S. papers and magazines come down a peg or two when writing for the Americans, so too apparently Americans living in England modify ‘their style when addressing the

native Briton. :

D.N.

W.