Word: zena
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Lenin on his way back to Russia to guide the revolution, Julian wishes him every success. Briffault's spokesman-hero, written down as missing after a hopeless attack, recovers in a German hospital, goes to Russia rather than return to perfidious England after the Armistice. There he finds Zena again, marries her. Though he survives both the Red-&-White civil war and Zena's death, Julian eventually discovers no better niche for himself in the post-War world than free-lance journalism, is last seen heading for the U. S., on the apparent principle of any port...
Taking up the fortunes of Julian Bern, cosmopolitan young English intellectual, where Europa dropped them. Author Briffault discovers his hero holidaying in Belgium with Zena, his current mistress. War has been declared, and the German invasion quickly comes too close for comfort. Julian and Zena escape to England, hoping to live there quietly as spectators of a world gone mad. They soon find both England and their chosen role impossible. Zena goes back to her native Russia; Julian despairingly enlists. Thereafter the narrative is governed less by probability than by convenience: coincidences pop up as required, scenes shift and actors...
...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 of Russian rulers. One of Zena's aunts, under the influence of religious charlatans who were then dominant at the Russian court, wanted to subsidize Pan-Slavic conspirators in the Balkans...
Moving in these circles, dividing his time between Italy and England, Julian learned to look upon the monarchs of Europe as insane, upon European society as doomed, struggled to maintain his belief in human reason in a world irrational and lost. Zena suddenly left him. In England he met suffragettes and careerists trying to be "modern," had a troubled love affair with a girl whose independence 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...
Near Binghamton, N. Y., Zena Brown went swimming with red painted toenails, suddenly felt something bite off her right big toe. Her companion, Colonel Elmer E. Johnson, explained that a snapping turtle or big fish had been deceived by the painted toenail...