January 1, 1985
The best-known of Household's 22 books, Rogue Male (1939), was a gripping adventure on the themes of liberty, tyranny and the ethics of political violence. He returns to those subjects in this elegant short novel. Its futuristic setting of a persistently patriotic Britain in an otherwise deracinated world allows the author to refer back to Roman Britain while commenting on the Thatcher government, the current situation in Ireland, the treatment of immigrants in England. As in the late novels of Graham Greene, the story is mostly an occasion for working out the author's ideas. Unlike Greene, though, Household has a sanguine view of humanity and he allows his different groups, poised at violence, to reach a rapprochement and engage in a dialogue that enriches all sides. Besides that, the book constitutes a tribute to England and the cantankerous British character. February 20