Duncan Fallowell
Best books: Nicolai Leskov, The Enchanted Wanderer (The Soho Book Company). The only English book in print from this wonderful 19th-century Russian writer, a 1926 trans- lation reissued by an extremely interesting book company. Why is Leskov not known here? Why, at the very least, no edition of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk?
Cyril Connolly, The Condemned Play- ground, Essays 1927-44 (Hogarth Critics). Connolly gets more and more interesting as Edmund Wilson (with whom he was often compared) gets less. But he's usually seen merely as one of the Brideshead gang and is hardly now considered as a writer, although stylistically he is the most original of that generation. Wonderful economy, aggression, speed, range and humour. Still no proper biography or orderly edition of his work.
Most overrated: Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits. Overrated, that is, until publication when the hype became obvious.
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