Author(s): Shirley Hazzard

International Fiction

The People in Glass Houses work for an American-based concern devoted to 'inflicting improvement' the world over. Amongst them are sloppy but erudite Algie Wyatt; Swoboda, a Slav DP, who finally rebels against a daily inflow of documentation; modest Ashmole-Brown, whose surprise best-seller unseats Sadie Graine, the all-time corridor fixer; Jaspersen, who falls in and out of love with the Organization; and Clelia Kingslake, who meets the most critical non-crisis of her career in Crete. Shirley Hazzard's eight dazzling stories are linked by a scorching contempt for the Organisation - a polyglot crucible in which talent rots and mediocrity thrives; in which the 'rights of man' are unthinkingly sacrificed on the altar of inter-departmental strife.