Revolution Described

MAN'S FATE -- Andre Malraux -- Smith & Haas ($2.50). When U. S. readers think of French novels (shutting their eyes to such frankly below-the-belt writers as Colette, such big-town cutups as Jean Cocteau), they are apt to call to mind the ironic stoicism of Anatole France, the cork-lined memory of Marcel Proust, or the glassy stare of Andre Gide. Of late years French literature seemed to have moved from the venereal into the neurotic ward, but it had not yet been given a clean bill of health. With Louis-Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night it managed to get as far as the garden of the asylum. This week, with Man's Fate, U. S. readers were to have a chance to see what a French writer could do in a complete change of air. Hailed by French critics as novel-of-the- year (it was awarded the 1933 Prix Concourt), Man's Fate is a story of revolution --not in Moscow or Paris but Shanghai. The story opens on a scene of midnight murder. Ch'en, a Chinese student turned terrorist, is about to commit his first political assassination. Cinematically, its action focussing on one after another of the half-dozen main characters, the story unreels a quick succession of sinister scenes. In a phonograph shop in the Chinese quarter Ch'en makes his report of success to the Communist leaders--Kyo, half-French, half-Japanese intellectual; Katov, snub-nosed Russian agent. With Baron de Clappique, antique-peddler and dope-smuggler, as go-between, the Communists raid a ship in the river for its consignment of arms, equip their scattered posts throughout the city for the imminent rising. Meantime Kyo's father, once an influential professor of sociology, now forced into retirement for his political views, buttresses his fatalism with opium; Ferral, president of the French Chamber of Commerce, bullies the chief of police, tries less successfully to bully his mistress. In the Black Cat night club and in the bar of the Shanghai Club life goes on as usual, though the wind brings sounds of shots from the Chinese city. With Chiang Kai-shek's nearing army to give support, the Communist uprising is successful, Shanghai is won for the Revolution. But the Kuomintang and the Communists do not trust each other. Chiang orders the Communist forces to turn in their arms. Kyo journeys to Hankow, Chinese headquarters of the International, to get help and advice, finds neither, returns knowing that the Communists in Shanghai are doomed. Ch'en determines to kill Chiang Kaishek, blows himself up in the attempt. Given 48 hours to leave the city, Clappique means to warn Kyo. but his passion for gambling makes him too late for their appointment. Kyo is arrested, swallows poison when he is sentenced to die by torture. Katov. wounded in the hopeless defense of the Communist headquarters, gives two comrades his poison though he knows his own death will not be quick. Ferral goes back to France by the same boat on which Clappique has stowed away. Kyo's father takes refuge in Japan, his wife in Russia. Connoisseurs of Gallic wit will find little to please their palates in Man's Fate. The one comic episode, in which the conquering Ferral is made a fool of by his mistress but counters in kind, has too bitter a taste for fun. The scenes that will stick in a reader's memory are more sinister--the phonograph shop after it had been bombed, with the bloody remains of the owner's wife and child; Ch'en's attempted murder; the crowded lines of wounded Communists lying in the station, waiting to be taken out and shot. Man's Fate is not a pleasant book but few readers will soon forget their encounter with it. The Author, at 32, is already acknowledged as a front-rank European writer. Son of a French civil servant, he went to Indo-China at 20. made an archaeological expedition to Cambodia and Siam, was not only an eyewitness of some of China's bloodiest revolutionary years (1925-27) but an actor in them. He was Commissioner of Propaganda for the revolutionary government of the South ; as a member of the Committee of Twelve he helped direct the Canton insurrection, saw plenty of hand-to-hand fighting. His story of" the Shanghai rising is a compressed and fictionalized account of what actually happened. Last March, with Pilot Molinier. Malraux made international headlines when he flew across the Great Arabian Desert and re ported the discovery of what he thought was the legendary city of Sheba. with 20 towers still standing (TIME. March 19). At present Author Malraux lives in Paris, working for the publishing house of Gallimard. His first book (Limes en Papier} written when he was 20. was poetic prose. His five subsequent books have all been based on his experience in the Orient. One of them. The Conquerors, was translated, published in the U. S. (1929). Restless. fair-skinned, well-built, with large sad grey eyes that stare intensely past the person he is talking to, Andre Malraux loves to talk, but never about himself. Says his friend and translator Haakon Chevalier, after sitting in on conferences with Paul Yalery, Count Keyserling, Aldous Huxley, Jules Romains and some 20 other leading European intellectuals: ''I can honestly say that not one of them could match Malraux for verbal artistry, for penetrating impromptu analysis of a wide range of subjects, or for knowledge of contemporary events.''

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