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Though Author Werfel's scene centres on a Syrian mountain top it takes in glimpses of a wider view. In Istanbul, Berlin and Antioch German missionaries and consuls, God-fearing Moslems, meddle dangerously with high-tension wires to save a race condemned by cold policy. Not all his Turks are smoothly smiling villains nor all his Armenians embattled heroes. More than a stirring tale, a passionate defense of a persecuted minority, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh has implications that make it unwelcome in Germany.*
The Author. A Viennese Jew, Franz Werfel was born a Bohemian in Prague, studied philosophy in Germany, and was teaching in the University of Leipzig when the War called him to the Russian front. Settled in Vienna after the Armistice, he has lived there quietly ever since, proclaiming in poems, essays, plays and novels his tragic philosophy: the brotherhood of man. Great frequenter of cafés, he is fond of lapsing into Oriental calm, seeking inspiration while in that state. Beethoven-locked, corpulent, 44, Author Werfel is known in Austria primarily as a poet. Some of his U. S.-translated novels: Verdi, The Man Who Conquered Death, Class Reunion.
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is the December choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club.
*Not actually banned by the Hitler Government, it is listed as ''undesirable," is sold only surreptitiously.