THE SUN OF THE DEAD. By Ivan Shmelov. (Dent. 7s.
6d.)--" Though differing greatly from Chekhov in genius, Shmelov to-day is in the same position as Chekhov was twenty years ago as regards literary reputation . . . he has achieved Continental fame, but is little known in England." So says Mr. C. J. Hogarth, who has translated this powerful novel, which gives a very vivid, first-hand series of pictures of life in the Crimea during the Terror following the Russian Revolu- tion. The story, told in the first person, is quiet and medi- tative in style, and the tragedies which it describes are the more poignantly felt because of the author's poetic sensitive- ness to the beauty of the Crimean background. As a revela- tion of Bolshevist methods the book is particularly damaging. Shmelov was no lover of the Czarist regime, but the horrors perpetrated by the men who now hold power in Russia are infinitely worse than anything done under the Czars.
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