Books: Foreign Exchange

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THEY WERE STILL DANCING—Evelyn Waugh—Cape & Smith ($2.50).

When precociously successful Author Evelyn Waugh (pronounced Waw) set England snickering with his Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, his remarks began to be of interest to literary gossips. When he said he hoped some day to write the perfect travel book, knew just how it should be written; when last year he went to Abyssinia for Ras Tafari's coronation (TIME, Nov. 3, 1930), Waugh-minded readers looked forward to a treat. Here it is—perhaps not the perfect travel book, but sufficiently Waughmsical, refreshingly out of the ordinary.

Says Author Waugh, the only historical parallel to life in Addis Ababa (Ras Tafari's made-to-order Abyssinian capital) is Alice in Wonderland. "It is in Alice only that one finds the peculiar flavor of galvanized and translated reality, where animals carry watches in their waistcoat pockets, Royalty paces the croquet lawn beside the chief executioner, and litigation ends in a flutter of playing cards." From Abyssinia he crossed to Arabia; then back to Zanzibar. Kenya Colony, the Congo, Cape Town and so home to England. If the descriptions of the people he encountered are often a little too funny to be true, you do not mind: the U. S. professor faking stomach-trouble to get out of an embarrassing situation; the "delightfully amiable young Greek," unwilling gigolo, with his polite apology: "You won't allow me, won't you?" Traveler Waugh does not actually make you pine to follow his path but he does give you a good vicarious trip: most of it interesting, some of it entertaining, now & then screamingly funny.

Author Evelyn Waugh looks more like a precociously bad little boy than a thriving 28-year-old author. At Oxford he moved quietly among the esthetes; safe now in the same smart world that shelters his elder brother Alec, he knows all the Bright Young People, lately set more than one of their tables on a squeal by turning Roman Catholic.