German Shorts

MARIANNE IN INDIA--Lion Feuchtwanger--Viking Press ($2).

Of these eight short stories, three were included in Author Feuchtwanger's lengthy novel, Success (1930); none was written later than seven years ago. Though not hot off the griddle, they are nevertheless served up with such neatness and dispatch that their taste is still fresh. Exile Feuchtwanger (Power, The Ugly Duchess, Josephus) thus explains their publication: "When at the beginning of 1933 my home in Berlin was searched by the National Socialists and nearly all my manuscripts, as well as those entrusted to me by friends in other countries, were destroyed, I thought the time had come to collect those of my shorter stories which I could still lay hands on."

A writer who deals in facts, Author Feuchtwanger polishes his wares until they seem as valuable and glittering as new-minted coin. Title-story in this book is a compressed novelet (it covers 35 years in 29 pages) of the love affair between Warren Hastings, ruler of India, and a little German hausfrau. Others: the fatally successful altitude flight of a French airman; a bullfight seen through a German painter's eyes; an aging poet catches his death of cold in trying to show off before a hen-brained girl.

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