David Hughes is, and seems always to have been, something of a maverick. Never a popular novelist, he appears more interested in satisfying needs that are important to him rather than those calculated to win him either critical or commercial success. Not that he has failed in the former: several of his books, both novels and nonfiction, have been very well received. But he goes his own way, preoccupied with the deleterious effects of two world wars and the threat of a still more disastrous third, and even more deeply concerned with establishing and preserving some kind of personal integrity as an individual and as a writer. In trying to find his own "voice," or stance, he has often taken chances, sometimes with little outward success, as in one or two of his earliest novels. But he appears to have learned from his failures and remains uncomplacent in...