Books: Exile and Zion

BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON — Robert Neumann—Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

For sheer fierceness and talent this latest novel by Robert Neumann (Mammon, The Queen's Doctor, Zaharoff) has few competitors in recent fiction. Like Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and Richard Wright's Native Son, it was written with passion called forth by human wrong. But in Neumann's case that wrong is more complex, less local, more profound: it is the story of the Jews of Europe, of whom Vienna-born Neumann is one. By the Waters of Babylon is perhaps his masterpiece, perhaps theirs.

Structurally...