SOURCE: "Cendrars Revived," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 3498, March 13, 1969, p. 262.

The following is a brief review of Cendrars's novel Moravagine.

A certified lunatic leaps over a Swiss asylum wall to the car of the psychiatrist abetting his escape. In his hand there is a bloody knife. He has just disembowelled a girl. "Everywhere Moravagine left one or more female corpses behind him. Sometimes out of fun."

Moravagine's misogynic sense of humour takes him to Berlin, Moscow, the United States, South America and back to Europe to join in the fun of the First World War. Under the clinical observation of his fascinated psychiatrist rescuer he shows what you can do to upset the bourgeois applecart if you really try. He becomes Germany's own Jack the Ripper, Russian revolutionary and terrorist, music student, pilot, prospector, explorer, potential sacrifice of a tribe of Orinoco Indians and then their god—a...