Volume 45, Number 1 · January 15, 1998
The Mahdi's Bullet
By Gabriele Annan
The Magician's Wife
by Brian Moore
Dutton/A William Abrahams Book, 229 pp., $23.95
The Magician's Wife comes on like an old French costume movie, perhaps by Marcel Carné. Danielle Darrieux would play the heroine, Jean-Louis Barrault her husband, and Charles Boyer, if he could be persuaded to make a cameo appearance, the dashing Colonel Deniau. The film has to be French, because the story is set first at the court of Napoleon III and then in half-colonized Algeria. The background for the first part is Winterhalter, with jewels glittering and court uniforms ablaze with medals; for the second part it is lushly orientaliste, all galloping hooves, flying burnooses, and silken cushions heaped on rich rugs.
Review, 1150 words
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