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Selected The Harper Prize Novel by Saul Bellow, John K. Hutchens and Jean Stafford What The Reviewers said About Vangel Griffin "A story-teller with natural power and narrative skill guides a story ironic, comic and bloodily cruel to a conclusion at once tragic and triumphant." Herald Tribune "Flashes of almost surrealistic comedy. Alonso says enough true and wise things to qualify him for the ranks of the world's wise fools. In spite of certain passages, a highly moral tract." NY Times "Satry and Vangel stand for an allegory of the old and the new, yet they are also miraculously themselves. Their conversations are poetic, exciting to read and fresh: when reading them memories of first love awake in the reader. This then is truly a novel about love. Love of ideals, love of the flesh, and love between human beings... And while Lobsenz speaks about love, he speaks with a note of authority in his voice that belongs only to great writers. As a reviewer I feel I ought to have sufficient humility to say that this might be a masterpiece." J.C.A., Arena Magazine (UK) "A number of the incidents invoving Alonso--his attempt to interrupt the Cardinal's Christmas Day sermon, his paranoid assault on a Teutonic art historian in the Prado, and others--constitute some of the stoutest belly humor I've run against in a long time.... Lobsenz's serious passages are superb. He can draw a face like a painter, give the whole feel of a person with a short vivid paragraph." John Graves, The New Leader "Alonso is a Don Quixote cum Candide whose pratfalls over the purity of his own logic attain a tragic hilarity." Time "The most original heroine since For Whom the Bell Tolls. Lobsenz does not write like Hemingway but in a bold new and rather breathtaking style." Miami Herald" "A strange and exciting piece of work. Satry is a brilliant creation--surrounded by as weird a collection of characters as has been thought up for a long time. Politics, a student revolt, scenes which would not be out of place in a bloody revenge tragedy. Nothing in this novel is obvious. A large and original talent at work here." Times Literary Supplement (UK) "A summary hardly does justice to Lobsenz's narrative gifts, spirited dialogue and vivid characterization. We have a fine novelist here." World Telegram & Sun "A wild profusion of farce, fantasy,violence, satire and sex. Tones of Thomas Wolf, Cervantes and Dostoevsky. It has an enormous energy originality and narrative power which are certainly proof of talent and possibly genius." Time and Tide (UK) "The Shavian dialogue is scintillating and superb, the episodes involving Alonso and his Sancho Panza are richly comic and all through one is aware of an original and philosophic talent at work. Recommended for all libraries." Library Journal "Among prize novels, this seems to be the best I have seen in a long time. Mr. Lobsenz seems to me an extremely fine writer and though he starts out with a bang I think he'll go farther and wider and higher." Dorothy Parker, Esquire