Word: briffault
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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EUROPA - Robert Briffault - Scribner...
...Robert Briffault's oldfashioned, awkwardly-written first novel cannot be compared with the great post-War novels on the same subject. Subtitled "The Days of Ignorance," it is an exhaustive 500-page picture of upper-class Europe in the decades before the War, with particular emphasis on those forces within society that were even then laying the ground for conflict. The emotional life of Julian Bern, precociously intelligent son of an English consul in Italy, began with a love affair with Zena, a Russian princess, whose noble family, perverse, gifted, incredibly wealthy, gave evidence of the fatal decadence...
...grew more & more neurotic. He met Mussolini when the future dictator was a Socialist editor, heard Jaures speak, listened to Balfour discuss European affairs. Although such contacts seem plausible enough for one of Julian's station in life, the famed historic figures seem even less real than Author Briffault's imaginary characters, who are often little more than mouthpieces for ideas and opinions. Julian took up science, plunged into work, loafed at Capri with elegant specimens of Europe's moral decay. When he met Zena again he found her married to a noble Russian pervert, became...