13 MAY 1966, Page 21

The blurb for Miss Dymphna Cusack's Illyria Reborn (Heinemann, 30s.)

says that a novel of hers has sold over a million copies in Russia, and I can well believe it. This book is an account of Albania, and shows her as one of those all-too-common people who visit a Com- munist country of which they don't speak the language and come home enthusing about happy children, contented workers and all that stuff. She even seems completely at home in a House of Culture or a Pioneer Palace, places which sound as if they would almost make me hanker for those good old blood feuds. But Albania is still something of a collector's piece, which gives her work a certain scarcity value.