Since the publication in this country of John Berger's prizewinning novel G. in 1972, his reputation here among leftists, and leftist artists especially, has grown steadily; and with good reason. Today, the example of his work over the last twenty-odd years (beginning, significantly enough perhaps, from around the time of his departure from Britain's stifling CP) constitutes, in effect, the first major set of standards for Marxist literary practice, and creative cultural practice in general, in the English-speaking world.

Of this achievement, and this set of standards, at least two elements seem particularly distinctive, both of which are amply in evidence in the two works under review. First, the example of Berger's openness to a variety of cultural practices, a willingness to open out to radical possibility, which manifests itself not only in the range of Berger's work … but in his rare commitment to finding moments of such possibility...