The Sky But Not the Heart

New York: The Macmillan Company. Very Good in Good dj. 1936. First Edition. Hardcover. [book is moderately shelfworn, with some light soiling to the edges of the text block; the jacket is heavily worn at the edges, with several small edge-tears and chips, and a little paper loss at the base of the spine]. A novel that purports to be "farce passing into comedy, comedy into tragedy," in which the prime minister of "East Georgiana, a not too mythical kingdom created in 1919 because two great statesmen [Clemenceau and Lloyd George] used too small a map," contrives a wacky sort of peace plan for his country: he rounds up every conceivable kind of malcontent from amongst the citizenry and deports them all to an island in the West Indies on a chartered steamship, with the idea being that each group will be able to set up its own Utopia on the island. As described in the jacket blurb, this motley group includes "Communists, Fascists, Nazis, Socialists, liberals, Single Taxers, Agrarians, believers in the Second Coming, pacifists, internationalists, medievalists, scientists, economists, members of the Youth Movement, natives of Exco Island, etc."; unsurprisingly, numerous conflicts and power struggles break out aboard the ship during its voyage. One contemporary reviewer called it "a penetrating analysis of the social and political world of today," adding that "it is a farce, but it has much that is wise, thoughtful and understanding, without preaching anything at all." The author (1888-1972) was a longtime journalist and editorial writer who penned a half-dozen novels (this being the second) and a number of non-fiction works. .