QUEST. By Rosita Forbes. (Cassell. 'Ts. 6d.)—This book is interesting,
not as a novel, but as a record of the opinion of a woman traveller in Syria who is interested in the politics of that country. It is probable that Rosita Forbes talks rather better Arabic than that with which she endows her heroine, for she makes use of Anne's conversations with various Sheikhs and Pashas to put the Arab and Syrian point of view with considerable force. In this column the book can be noticed only as a novel, and it must be owned that the sentimental story of Anne is not either interesting or original. The conventional lover is very commonplace, while the strong, silent man whom Anne eventually marries is open to all the strictures which can be applied to the hero popularly held to be beloved of the woman novelist. The book, however, is worth reading from the political standpoint, and shows that there is another side both to the " national home for the Jews " and to the French Mandate Province in Syria.
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