Here in Canada

D.A.N. Jones

• The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Skvorecky, translated by Paul Wilson
  Chatto, 571 pp, £9.95, February 1985, ISBN 0 7011 2931 X
• The Governess by Patricia Angadi
  Gollancz, 181 pp, £8.95, February 1985, ISBN 0 575 03485 8
• The Anderson Question by Bel Mooney
  Hamish Hamilton, 185 pp, £8.95, March 1985, ISBN 0 241 11456 X
• The centre of the universe is 18 Baedekerstrasse by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy
  Hamish Hamilton, 199 pp, £8.95, March 1985, ISBN 0 241 11492 6

Josef Skvorecky left Czechoslovakia in 1968 and is now Professor of English at Erindale College in Canada. His new novel is about a Czech called Danny Smiricky who also emigrated to Canada in 1968 and who has become Professor of American Literature at Edenvale College. The invented name, ‘Edenvale’, illustrates Smiricky’s mixed feelings about his academic life in Canada: it might seem idyllic, paradisal, to a Czech who spent his youth under the Nazis and then the Communists, but he often catches himself thinking that his students and fellow teachers are too innocent, like Adam before the Fall, too naive, too credulous.