Books: Man Without a Country

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But poor young Menen could not down the "magic potion." Too Indian ever to be English, too much a John Bull to fancy sacred cows, Menen stumbled on into displaced maturity. Out of fairness, he made one effort to see if De Valera's Eire were perhaps his true homeland; but a tour of the country on which he was asked to admire 200 "crosses of white marble," each inscribed: A MARTYR TO BRITISH IMPERIALISM, turned him positively black & tan with irritation.

Menen now lives in a sunny villa near Naples, where no one, presumably, bothers to assure him that he is Indian, English, Irish or, indeed, anything but himself.' The remainder of his book is composed of scathing studies of British and Indian follies and foibles, and gibes at the intolerant, absurd dogma which racial smugness arouses in people of every race. Dead Man is coldly planned and excellently written, but it has one (characteristically English) weakness which takes much of the punch out of it. This is Author Me-nen's insistence that his hybrid self is a purely satirical and intellectual matter. Betraying suffering or pain, he evidently feels, would be as improper as being caught sitting in one's dirty bathwater.