TALES OF ADVENTURERS

Adventurers, rogues, bons vivants, and an honest man or two -- for a series of stories which range from British to Balkan, American to Asian spheres against which the distant guns of war reverberate, and which make the most of the sporting chance, the fortuitous circumstance, the ironic backlash. There's a Roumanian with a fading vista of youth, freedom, women, food, who exchanges a foot for a stomach; a man of conscience -- who deliberately did the right thing at the wrong time; two ex-security officers who are joined by the common memory -- and cold uneasiness -- of a political murder; a warship, packed with human freight, and the deterioration of a passenger who cannot get a drink; an Englishman in Africa who absconds with some money for a native cause, and another in the desert who -- with a Soviet companion -- shares a mutual moment of reverence at the grave of a monk; etc. etc. The casual gesture -- the isolated incident -- of effrontery or gallantry, played up and out with vivacity and style.