JAVA-JAVA. By Byron Steel. (Knopf. 7s. 6d.)—This novel is an
unbridled exercise in fantasy. Even the illusion of reality is not attempted. Mr. Steel, while choosing the present day for his period, writes as though it were as easy to fly across the world as to take a taxi from Waterloo to Piccadilly ; while he fills the Javanese jungle with living prototypes of the fabled unicorn. The hero is connected with an expedition that is hunting for Javanese beauties for the Paris " market," while the heroine, having lost him in France, rediscovers him after a long aeroplane journey with a highly romantic and enterprising pilot. The story comes near at times to vulgarity. But it is too riotously youthful and too frankly absurd to give real offence. As the work of a twenty-one-year-old writer, it promises better things to come.
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