In Dostoevsky's Steps

DUEL--Ronald Fangen--Viking ($2.50). When Feodor Dostoevsky died 53 years ago. a light went out of literature's night sky that appears only once in a blue moon. Last week U. S. readers were rubbing amazed eyes, asking themselves if the moon were not once again blue. For Duel, Norwegian Author Ronald Fangen's first, book to be brought out in the U. S.. shone with an unmistakably Dostoevskian light. Like his great prototype. Author Fangen is a foreigner but his translated words need no visa. The world he writes about is the same world of which most U. S. readers feel themselves citizens, a country inhabited not by brain-fevered intellectuals but by human beings whose hearts are troubled. Klaus Hallem turned out to be a country doctor while his old classmate George Roiter was becoming one of the biggest men in Oslo, head of the university, famed throughout Europe as a humane expert on international law. Since schooldays they had been friends and rivals. Hallem was self-centered, disagreeable, fiercely envious; Roiter brilliant, unselfish, easily preeminent. Twice Roiter had saved Hallem's life--once when he was publicly denounced for plagiarizing and had gone home to hang himself; again when Hallem had made a girl pregnant and she had died in an attempt at abortion. In their middle-age both had good wives, children they were proud of; they rarely saw each other. At their 35th class reunion they met for the last time. Roiter was speaker of the evening at the class dinner, envious Hallem merely an unconsidered diner. To show his superiority Hallem got drunk, interrupted Roiter's speech, finally reeled out. laughing. Flallem's wife nursed him through the inevitable physical and mental hangover, kept him from trying once more to kill himself. But the next time the mood got him Hallem was too quick for his saviors. Roiter, too. fell on evil days. To an international insurance company on whose board of directors he served came a cropper. Thanks to Roiter, its affairs were wound up before they fell foul of the law, but the directors' reputations for smartness were not enhanced. Roiter resigned from the university, got many an abusive letter in his daily mail. He knew that his invalid son. best of his family, was dying. When Hallem's son brought him the news of his father's suicide and accused Roiter of having always felt contempt for Hallem, of needing his wretchedness as a foil for his own excellence. Roiter admitted it. When Roiter died, a few days later, he was a really great man at last. Side by side with this main narrative-- the lifelong duel between Hallem who wanted to die and Roiter who was determined to live--are the hardly less moving stories of Hallem's sons, inheritors of his bitter spirit, of his wife, whom he alternately loved and hated, of Roiter's wife and children, many another minor but well-indicated character. Well and truly translated,-- Duel does not read like a translation, has none of the queer woodenness of a foreign book.

The Author, like many a well-educated Norwegian, studied abroad (in England, Germany, France), then went home to do something about it. He wrote essays, book reviews, made his first splash with a successful play, Syndefald (The Downfall, 1922) when he was only 27. Two years later he joined the liberal'Oslo daily Tidens Tegn, as literary editor, has held the job ever since. Before Duel he wrote two novels: Nogen nnge menncsker (Some Young People) and Erik. His latest. En kvinnesvei (The Way of a Woman) has just been published in Norway. Popular and respected. Fangen was president of the Norwegian Authors' League from 1928-32.

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