SOURCE: "Atonement in Turkey," in New York Times Book Review, March 13, 1983, p. 7.

In the following review, Edwards finds The Rage of the Vulture an admirable attempt to reveal personal conflict amid catastrophic world events.

The recent conquest of America's television screens by The Winds of War is the latest evidence of our desire to know the origins of the cataclysms the 20th century has made so commonplace. Or since such entertainments conceal as much as they reveal, maybe it is our desire not to know these origins too accurately, on the not unreasonable assumption that the whole truth might be more than we could handle.

The Rage of the Vulture, the sixth novel by the British writer Barry Unsworth, could also be made into a pretty good television spectacle but only by excising most of what makes it impressive as a novel; it comes not to conceal but...