Books: Before Stalingrad

THE WORLD'S LAST CORNER (295 pp.)—Theodor Plievier—Appleton-Century-Crofts ($3).

In Stalingrad (TIME, Nov. 1, 1948), Theodor Plievier, German novelist, wrote what still remains the most powerful novel of World War II. Leaning on that fact, his U.S. publishers have now issued an "adaptation" of two earlier Plievier novels written in the '30s, and called it The World's Last Corner. The stories, clumsily adapted, add nothing to the reputation of the man who wrote Stalingrad, but they have several lively moments, and show something of what Plievier was up to before the Wehrmacht rolled into Russia.

Actually, The World's Last Corner is a picaresque novel...