Books: Microcosm of War

SIBERIAN GARRISON—Rodion Markovits —Horace Liveright ($2.50).

A young lawyer in Budapest, with a wife and infant child, has just recovered from an illness and is looking for a job when the World War breaks out. He unheroically volunteers (he has flat feet). To his great surprise he is accepted, goes to training camp, then to the front, is captured by the Russians, and, in company with thousands of German and Austrian prisoners, is sent from one prison camp to another, finally landing in Siberia. There, for almost six years, he stays.

Rank still counts:...