The twilight world of U.N.O. and the W.F.O. and their agents in Java is the setting of Bernice Rubens latest novel The Ponsonby Post. To the Third World, which sometimes appears to be lying fallow waiting for ideological and agricultural cultivation, come the improvers. For the most part cynicism has eroded their commitment to the organisation, which sent them, or to the country which is their host—willing or otherwise. The officials' and administrators' lives are played out in pampered luxury, enlivened by the time-honoured ingredients of drink, gambling and sex. (p. 52)

A wide variety of characters is brought into the novel, and Bernice Rubens maintains control of them so that profusion does not lead to confusion. Sure of her touch she can, at the beginning of the novel, tiptoe up the edge of farce and get away with it…. But too often in...