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Fiction: Recent Books: Oct. 12, 1936

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TIME

THE BELLS OF BASEL—Louis Aragon— Harcourt, Brace ($2.50). Uneven but interesting novel by a famed French poet who was once a leader in the Dada and surrealist movements. Laid in pre-War France, it deals with the careers of a fashionable courtesan, a rebellious daughter of a Russian émigré, a revolutionist, includes some vivid scenes of social corruption, some dim ones of social conflict.

THE AFRICAN WITCH—Joyce Gary— Morrow ($2.50). Long, semirealistic novel laid in British West Africa, revolving around the defeat of a handsome, English-educated native chieftain in his attempts to improve the lot of his people. Witchcraft, riots of native women, the governing methods of the British, a decapitation, the inept assistance of a sentimental English lady, contribute to his failure.

THE BURNING CACTUS — Stephen Spender — Random House ($2). Five short stories by an English poet, recording the suffering pulsations of sensitive young men—all strangely alike in temperament — in contemporary France, Spain, Italy, England and Austria at the time of the assassination of Dollfuss.

Non-Fiction

A WALK AFTER JOHN KEATS—Nelson S. Bushnel—Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50). Novel piece of literary sleuthing in which the author retraces every mile of the jointly-documented, 650-mile walking tour taken by John Keats and a friend in the summer of 1818. The path led Author Bushnel (who was weighed down with a load of maps, books and Keats’s diary) over the hills of North England and Scotland and over trails overgrown with shipyards and factory districts that were not there when Keats made his way.

THE ANATOMY OF FRUSTRATION—H. G. Wells—Macmillan ($2). Typical Wells item, describing the philosophical work of a future thinker, an erudite and daring U. S. industrialist whose ideas on the obstacles to human progress are more familiar than Author Wells seems willing to admit.

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