THE END OF ALL MEN

A leading Swiss novelist, author of 30 or more novels of which only one has been published here -- and that in 1923, with what is virtually a symbolic novel of world destruction, a prose poem, developing a conjectural, cosmic theme -- the earth falling toward the sun and all life about to end. In slow, stylized prose -- much of it beautiful -- here are episodic passages of the land (Switzerland) and the people crazed by heat; of a grocery woman, a Savoyard, a stockholder, a fisherman; of scenes in a tram, a station, a lake, a cafe; and finally, of violence, shooting, pillaging, suicide, until a handful of people retreat to the mountains for respite until the inevitable end of all life. Characterized by an ""insistent, ingenuous sort of art"", this is an interesting, elemental, experimental work -- and a beautiful piece of translation.