FOREVER ULYSSES—C. P. Rodocanachi —Viking ($2.50).
Best-known Greek adventurers of all time have been Homer’s Ulysses and the late Sir Basil Zaharoff, munitions tycoon and Europe’s ”Mystery Man.” Until last week, no one thought of drawing a parallel between the two. Forever Ulysses, a fictionized biography, makes its hero a modern Greek named Ulysses whose career, recalling Zaharoff’s, also recalls Ulysses’.
For his model Author Rodocanachi disclaims any single prototype, says he drew on several adventurous Greeks of his acquaintance. His own career offered a good starting point. Egyptian-born, English-educated, Constantine Rodocanachi is a veteran of the Greco-Turkish, the Balkan and World Wars, was a leader of the Venizelos revolution. He has made and lost several fortunes, served in the diplomatic corps. Now 58 years old, he has retired to devote his full time to writing. Forever Ulysses is his first novel.
Hardheaded, slippery Hero Ulysses left home with his mother’s blessing when he was six. At 18 he had been a bootblack, a harbor scavenger, a hashish peddler in the brothels of Alexandria. His next move was to embark for Africa with a stock of liquor for the British army in the Sudan. At Khartoum he saw Chinese Gordon killed by the Moslem Mahdi, became the Mahdi’s finance minister and political adviser for ten precarious years that included his forced marriage to a captive nun in an obscenely burlesqued ceremony. Meanwhile he had become Kitchener’s No. 1 spy, and when Kitchener routed the Mahdi and cleaned up the Sudan, Ulysses -was the most powerful trader in Africa.
When he overreached himself and went bankrupt, he headed for Manhattan, made a quick fortune in cigarets. Boredom drove him into the munitions business. In Paris, Ulysses created the armament cartel which did the main work in preparing both sides for the World War. In old age “his soul expanded in its power and goodness.” Peacefully dead at 71, he got magnificent funerals in Greece and England, canonization by the Church. In accordance with his last will, he was buried simply in his native Greek village, his enormous fortune split into a thousand bequests.
As narrative. Forever Ulysses clips along at a fast pace. Readers who like a breathing spell at intervals may linger over such reflections as these: “. . . The spirit of Greece . . . from the time of Hermes . . has changed but little. . . . When a Greek has learning he understands nothing; and when he knows nothing he understands everything. … To exploit the natives of every country is for the Greek an atavistic dream. . . . For the Greeks alone have known how to worst the Jews.” The resulting Greek portrait may seem to Occidentals as confusing and contradictory as Balkan activities generally, may also constitute a tribute to the author’s honesty.
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