Cairo. By Percy White. (Constable and CO. 6s.)—The opening chapters
of Mr. White's latest book are full of promise. Through the streets of Cairo there moves as spectator and showman Daniel Addington, a normal, healthy English Radical, with a taste for investigation. He passes by a number of contrasting, unusual types; he meets Sayed,
leader of the turbulent Young Egyptian Party, who was educated at Oxford and claims racial equality with the white man ; he meets Whalley, the fraudulent bank manager; he jostles against vulgar little Levantine, and adventurous widows, and second-rate Englishmen, and all the world and underworld of the mingled city. Unfortunately the writer, who thus seemed likely to control his characters, after the manner of Zola, in crowds and communities, decided about half-way to be content with melodrama of a popular, not uncommon type, and became involved in a complicated, and somewhat confused, story of murder and intrigue and the unfounded scandals concerning Ann Donne. Mr. White cannot help being clever; he possesses the enviable power of seeing below the surface, and of creating brilliant atmo- spheric effects if he would rid himself of the sense of plot and of adventure, he might do some admirable work on broad and individual lines.
Previous page
