CATHOLIC TASTES

Thanks again to Val Hennessy and her splendid Retro Reads column in The Daily Mail. On April 30th Val featured our newly released edition of The Knot of Vipers, by François Mauriac. In this novel the author - a Nobel Prize winner from 1952 - explores the family and the Catholic soul with profound and moving insight, telling the story of an embittered man setting out to leave a poisonous letter to his family as his legacy, and examining and revising his feelings in the process.

Although most of the Capuchin books are by British authors, we're keen to include suitable titles from foreign writers who deserve a wider audience in English. Several publishers have carried out very fine work in recent years to produce attractive new editions of such literature, helping to coax British readers into a better awareness of writing from other countries.

David

MAIL AND FEMALE

Val Hennessy, champion of classic literature in her Daily Mail column, Retro Reads, reviews our edition of Rose Macaulay's Non-Combatants and Others in today's newspaper. The book explores the issues of war, pacifism and social non-conformity through the eyes of its young heroine.

Our book sits just south of Muriel Spark's Memento Mori, reissued by Virago. The Virago website is a treat and a real pleasure to browse through, and Spark is one of those authors of whose works I am always meaning to read more, having enjoyed Miss Jean Brodie and The Ballad of Peckham Rye.

David

US AND THEM

Many thanks to Val Hennessy at the Daily Mail for a nice review of Vercors' You Shall Know them. Val says:

From the dramatic beginning you will be mesmerised by this weird, though-provoking novel

and concludes that the book is

a good, gripping read.

Vercors' book is an examination of the dividing line between humans and other animals, and doesn't shirk from profound philosophical investigation into the nature of humanity. The plot involves a radical and daring experiment in which a journalist artificially inseminates a female of the 'tropi' species and then deliberately kills the resulting infant, in order to provoke a trial which examines the nature of the tropi, of humanity and of his crime.

With an ever growing consciousness around the world about how we treat other species, with Spain granting apes 'human' rights, and groups in other countries agitating for the same, there was never a more timely novel.

David