Among the many different categories of the novel. I have created two for myself: holiday novels and hospital novels. The first must be long, absorbing and not too exacting in style or thought. The second must be also long, also absorbing and in no way productive of morbid imaginings. M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions falls into both these categories, even if its size and weight are such that to place it across the knees might easily bring a deck-chair crashing to the ground or cause a relapse in a debilitated convalescent.

An account of a young man's life in India for about twenty-five years from the Indian Mutiny to the Second Afghan War, this jumbo historical novel reminded me irresistibly of one of those elephants, slow, strong and dependable, on which I would sometimes journey during my Indian childhood. The reader has the reassuring knowledge that he...