SOURCE: A review of The Marquis de Bolibar, in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 1284, September 9, 1926, p. 594.

In the following excerpt, the critic questions Perutz's handling of magic in The Marquis de Bolibar while offering a generally favorable review of the novel.

The Marquis De Bolibar by Leo Perutz has considerable distinction; at its weakest one is conscious that there is a superior and original mind behind it. The plot is good enough, the characterization excellent, the air of a memoir well simulated. Where it fails is in the treatment of the magical events upon which the story mainly hinges. These are sometimes trivial and sometimes clumsy, and the fashion in which the tone changes from the ironical to the rhetorical when they are dealt with is unsatisfactory. It is, nevertheless, a novel quite out of the ordinary.

Its theme is an imaginary episode of the Peninsular War, the...