SANCTUARY V.

By Budd Schulberg '36.New York: The World Publishing Co.,1969. 415 pp. $6.95.

The late Sidney Cox used to suggest to Dartmouth undergraduates in his writing courses that they write from their own experiences, selecting carefully the meaningful and relevant episodes that contribute to human development and character. From his first novel, What Makes Sammy Run, Budd Schulberg '36 has followed the Cox dictum, and his current work of fiction, SanctuaryV, his first novel in some fifteen years, carries on this tradition.

In this novel, crafted chiefly in Mexico City, Schulberg turns from Hollywood, the waterfront, and prize fighting to the ideologies and politics of revolution as practiced in Latin America. Article V of the Pan American Convention specifies the conditions for granting political asylum, and the plot centers on a South American leader who returns from exile to lead his nation only to be overturned and forced into asylum.

It is an all too familiar account to those who read today's newspapers and journals. But Schulberg's feelings, his extraordinary perceptions, enable him to make flesh and blood of his characters so the reader shares the excitement of revolution, senses the ideals and aspirations behind a surge for power and the anguish, loneliness, and frustrations that come to any human in exile. While love, sex and human emotions are the stuff of Sanctuary V, it is, in the best sense, a political novel. After reading this volume one can understand and appreciate more fully what is going on in Cuba and throughout Latin America. One only hopes that the State Department's Latin American desk men have this book on their required reading list.

Mr. Jordan, Associate Director of Development, is a Contributing Editor of the MAGAZINE.