Delicate Business

The author of this little novel, who died in 1951, appears to have been entirely untouched by the dominant influences in modern fiction since World War One. And the world of which he writes seems to have existed apart from modern Europe, for the setting is the island of Zante in the Ionian Sea, ethereally lovely, with its groves of olives, laurels, myrtles, oranges—part of the ancient kingdom of Ulysses, and a naval base for the Greeks and the Crusaders. It was famous in the ancient world for its oil springs and asphalt wells, and it is still an island in a trance, with enameled