["Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue" is] a collection of nine essays on journeys to remote areas of the Hindu, Mohammedan and Buddhist worlds with an excursion to Central America. It combines a superb gift for observation with an almost complete lack of the capacity to deal with it once it is made. The second step, as it were, is missing, and we would resign ourselves to this deficiency with a better grace if the preliminary processes were not so excellent. The vision is there; the characters move and speak as they do in life and are in fact alive. The zest of the author, that most important ingredient, is not wanting. But, whenever there is a conclusion to be drawn or a reflection to be made—the result and climax one would hope from all those most uncomfortable journeys—the whole thing falls flat...