BRILLIANT NOVEL
THE AFFABLE HANGMAN, by Ramon J. Sender; Jonathan Cape, English price 12/6. ‘THE title of this novel is gripping and apt. In all my years of reviewing® I have seldom had such an exhilarating sense of "discovery," in finding a writer of fiction who is at the same time philosopher, historian, raconteur, and stylist. Sender sees things in the round, and tells them tellingly. Let me admit that his philosophy is harsh. He sees society as violent, and law as dependent on the hangman. His historical setting is Spain, in Franco's Civil War: but in essence his strictures are universal. and his outlook anarchic. Even the Spanish anarchists. who come closest to being the "heroes" of his novel, inspire compassion rather than admiration; and they share his compassion with their worst enemies, who are also the victims of circumstance. The hangman himself is a victim. The main difference between Sender’s hangman and other hangmen is that he accepts his responsibility. He is society’s conscievce. as well as its instrument. The book, then, is about good and evil. These are timeless themes, requiring strict handling to avoid bathos. Fortunately, Sender is strict. The philoso-pher-historian is not in charge. He emerges, rather, from the story-teller ‘ (continued on next page)
BOOKS
(continued from previous page) Sender is an artist and raconteur with perfect control of his medium; and The Aftable Hangman is a brilliant novel, rather than the usual social tract masquerading as fiction. It is perhaps strange, therefore, that it reminds one of Volaire’s Candide. The explanation lies in Sender's pellucid prose and lively wit, as much as in his hero’s fantastic adventures, These adventures carry him all over Spain, in search of himself and a cause to cling to. He finds, finally, what Eliot calls "a kind of reconciliation .. ." with evil, which is "a necessary condition. . ."" Readers of Sartre will recognise something of his view in Sender’s; but I venture to say that Sartre has not written a novel as powerful as The
Afiabie Hangman
Anton
Vogt
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19541210.2.23.5
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 803, 10 December 1954, Page 13
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338BRILLIANT NOVEL New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 803, 10 December 1954, Page 13
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