The Times Literary Supplement
"[A] magnificent, authoritative, compassionate, ironic, funny, and tragic book, in which emotional and intellectual developments in private persons are seen to be now parallel to, now conditioned by, economic and political actions."


Book Description
A tale of enormous suspense and growing horror, The Fox in the Attic is the widely acclaimed first part of Richard Hughes's monumental historical fiction, "The Human Predicament." Set in the early Twenties, the book centers on Augustine, a young man from an aristocratic Welsh family, and on his struggle to make sense of the world, devastated by the Great War, in which he is condemned to come to maturity. Unjustly suspected of having had a hand in the murder of a young girl, Augustine takes refuge in the remote castle of Bavarian relatives. There his hopeless love for his devout cousin Mitzi blinds him to the hate that will lead to the rise of German fascism. The book comes to a climax with a brilliant description of the Munich putsch, and a disturbingly intimate portrait of Adolph Hitler. The Fox in the Attic, like its no less remarkable sequel The Wooden Sheperdess, offers a richly detailed, Tolstoyan overview of the modern world and its pathologies. At once a novel of ideas and an exploration of the dark spaces of the heart, it is a book in which the past returns in all its original unpredictability and strangeness.


About the Author
Richard Hughes (1900-1976) published his first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica, in 1926. It became a bestseller in England and America, won the Prix Femina in France, and has since established itself as a modern classic. Hughes's other books include In Hazard, a story of men at sea, and The Fox in the Attic and The Wooden Shepherdess, the first two volumes of an unfinished trilogy, "The Human Predicament," about the rise of German Fascism and the onset of World War II.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A tale of enormous suspense and growing horror, The Fox in the Attic is the widely acclaimed first part of Richard Hughes's monumental historical fiction, The Human Predicament. Set in the early Twenties, the book centers on Augustine, a young man from an aristocratic Welsh family, and on his struggle to make sense of the world, devastated by the Great War, in which he is condemned to come to maturity. Unjustly suspected of having had a hand in the murder of a young girl, Augustine takes refuge in the remote castle of Bavarian relatives. There his hopeless love for his devout cousin Mitzi blinds him to the hate that will lead to the rise of German fascism. The book comes to a climax with a brilliant description of the Munich putsch, and a disturbingly intimate portrait of Adolph Hitler.

The Fox in the Attic, like its no less remarkable sequel The Wooden Shepherdess, offers a richly detailed, Tolstoyan overview of the modern world and its pathologies. At once a novel of ideas and an exploration of the dark spaces of the heart, it is a book in which the past returns in all its original unpredictability and strangeness.

About the Author:

Richard Hughes (1900-1976) published his first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica, in 1926. It became a bestseller in England and America, won the Prix Femina in France, and has since established itself as a modern classic. Hughes's other books include In Hazard, a story of men at sea, and The Fox in the Attic and The Wooden Shepherdess, the first two volumes of an unfinished trilogy, The Human Predicament, about the rise of German Fascism and the onset of World War II.

FROM THE CRITICS

Times Literary Supplement