LEWIS, Norman ~ Within the Labyrinth

FIRST UK PRINTING. Jonathan Cape, London: 1950

8vo., oatmeal-coloured cloth lettered in blue to upper cover and along backstrip, with publisher's device to foot; together in the wonderful pictorial dustwrapper featuring a wraparound image by Hans Tisdall; unclipped (9s. 6d. net); THE BOOK a very bright, clean copy, with very mild pushing to spine tips, one tiny strip of darkening to the lower edge of front board; aside from very faint spotting and offsetting to the prelims, a near-fine copy; THE WRAPPER very good, with some evening toning and lightly rubbed along folds; more so to head of spine and upper edge, with some nicks and small chips. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition, first printing. The second novel written by the travel writer Norman Lewis, following on from his first work of fiction, 'Samara', published one year previously. 'Within the Labyrinth' is set after the end of the war, and follows a soldier, Manning, as he travels to a town in Italy devastated by a volcanic eruption. There, he attempts to secure justice for a local partisan hero, imprisoned on false charges by a corrupt police chief. Lewis had served in the British Army in Italy during the Second World War, and his later account 'Naples '44' (subtitled 'An Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth') was cited by the Telegraph as "one of the great first-hand accounts of the Second World War." Written from his own personal journals kept during the conflict, it is undoubtedly true that this novel, published some 20 years before the author's true account, contains similar testimonials of the war-torn city, its desperate people, and the eruption of Vesuvius. "Were I given the chance to be born again," writes Lewis, "Italy would be the country of my choice." Graham Greene once famously referred to Lewis as "one of the best writers, not of any particular decade, but of our century". A very nice copy.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good