Books: Prophet of Doom

HEARKEN UNTO THE VOICE — Franz Werfel— Viking ($3).

In The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Franz Werfel wrote a novel that was at once an account of an extraordinary military operation, a story of a successful resistance to tyranny, a tribute to simple religious fervor. Containing more heavily mystical passages than most best-sellers (total sales 158,000 copies), it made up for them with excellent descriptions of well-planned, hard-fought, hand-to-hand battles. Moreover, it had the inherent excitement of a struggle in which a hopelessly outnumbered force decides to fight, turns on its enemy and...