Book Notes
The Biography of Franz Kafka is being published by Secker and Warburg on April 24th. And it raises, by the way, a rather nice problem in literary ethics. When Kafka died in 1925 he left a letter with Max Brod, his life-long friend, instructing him to destroy all his manuscripts and papers. Brod ignored this request, and the world is to that extent indebted to him for the posthumous publica- tion of The Trial and .The Castle. Now the debt looks like being increased, as this new study of Kafka's life and work, by Brod himself, is based on his friend's papers. Actually Kafka was and has remained with Brod a passionate preoccupation. In his friend's lifetime Brod made him the central figure of his novel The Kingdom of Love. And now, years later, comes his biography, translated by G. Humphreys Roberts, which in the circumstances is almost bound to throw new light on Kafica's personality as well as ,on his writings.
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Two attractive fiction publications come from John Lehmann on April 25th. Genevieve, by Jacques Lemarchand, translated by Rosa- mond Lehmann, has been added to The Modern European Library, which promises to introduce into this country translations of some of the best of European fiction. M. Lemarchand, at present little known over here, is one of France's best-known young novelists. Four Cautionary Tales is a translation from the Chinese of stories which were taken from a collection originally published towards the end of the Ming Dynasty. Only two copies are believed to exist in Europe of the seventeenth-century book from which the stories were taken. Dr. Arthur Waley, himself a translator of numerous Chinese books, writes in a preface that "they are superior in every way to similar stories in the Decameron." Fiction nearer home includes Estuary, John Pudney's first novel for ten years, which The Bodley Head are publishing.
Most people will remember Dr. Robert C,ollis for his autobio- graphy, The Silver Fleece, which was a best-seller between the wars. But professionally he is known as one of the foremost children's physicians in Ireland. And in this capacity he has been involved in rescuing and caring 'for refugee children throughout Europe, work in which he has been associated with Miss Han Hogerzeil, a Dutch member of the United Nations Secretariat specialising in refugee problems. Now they have co-operated in writing a record of their experiences and journeys which took them through war-torri Europe from Arnhem to Belsen, from Auschwitz to Prague. Straight On will be published by Methuen.
Duckworth announce the publication on April loth of Bach, by Esther Meynell. This is the first post-war reprint of any volume in their Great Lives Series, the stock of which was almost totally destroyed during the war. Other titles, Cromwell, Brahms, Marl- borough, Handel, are promised shortly.
Dr. E. J. Dingwall has already contributed fairly extensively to psychical literature, of which he has made a study. For a num- ber of years he was research officer for the Society for Psychical Research, and as such was responsible, among other things, for investigating the authenticity of a number of mediums. In the West Indies he made a special study of social and religious conditions in Trinidad and Haiti with reference to abnormal mental phenomena. One of his hobbies is the study of rare and queer customs. All of which prepares the reader for his description of his new book, Some Human Oddities: "It contains a series of learned, yet highly start- ling, biographies of what could be generically termed a fanatical crowd." Home and van Thal publish on April sash.
The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the most distinguished work of fiction published during 1946 has gone tp Oliver Onions, for his novel about the War of the Roses, Poor Man's Tapestry. One of its incidental characters—but one of the most memorable— the juggler, has now been built up to be the central figure in Mr. Onions' latest novej, Arras of Youth, which Michael Joseph are publishing shortly. - This is, incidentally, the fourth time within eight years that the James Tait Black award has been earned by
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