Books: False Dawn

THE INHERITORS (233 pp.)—William Golding—Harcourt, Brace & World ($4.50).

Imagination is a word that scarcely occurs in modern criticism, perhaps because it has an amateurish, imprecise sound, and perhaps also because there is not often an occasion to use it. Not many of today's authors are good imaginers. One of the few is Britain's William Golding, 51. Lord of the Flies, his horrifying novel about castaway children, is a parable of man's instinctive hostility to man whose growing popularity in undergraduate circles (TIME, June 22) now rivals that of Catcher in the Rye. Golding's new book is less savage, and it...