Lance: A Novel About Multicultural Men

New York: The John Day Company. Near Fine in Very Good dj. (c.1941). First Edition. Hardcover. [a nice clean copy with very light shelfwear, top corner of front endpaper clipped; the jacket is a little edgeworn, with very shallow chipping at the top and bottom of the spine, a few tiny holes (insect-nibbles?) along the rear flapfold, and some minor soiling and light creasing to the rear panel]. Novel set in a Bulgarian prison camp housing British soldiers, at the very end of World War I, and centering around the title character, "a private in the British Army who is as much German as he is English" due to an unusual upbringing, who is also a social scientist who is hoping, through observation of "many kinds of people in crucial situations," to come to a greater understanding of how the world can cope with the "millions of rootless, groping multicultural men and women" that are the result of refugee movements caused by war and facilitated by developments of "rapid transport and communication." An interesting and perhaps prescient work, published decades before "multiculturalism" became a culture-wars buzzword. The New York Times reviewer noted that "in any dictator country its publication would be prohibited and the author thrown into a concentration camp -- or worse." .