[In The Mountain, a] plane for Calcutta crashes on a Swiss Alp. Its passengers are all presumed dead, but it is carrying as well a cargo of gold for England. Two brothers, stirred by equally powerful drives of spiritual reassurance and monetary gain, climb the mountain to find the plane. In a wonderful descriptive chapter the superhuman climb is minutely detailed, and in a moving final section the ancient moral conflict is inevitably determined.

The consummation might have been expected to have more than its share of triteness had Troyat not made his hero a man of damaged wit, a simple, muddled peasant who feels deeply but without understanding, whose fervent loyalties are without logic or perception. Unlike John Steinbeck, however, whose Johnny Bear and Lennie and Tularicto were similarly deficient, Troyat has created a heroic rather than a mere freakish simpleness; his hero's essential goodness pervades the...