Philip Caputo (A Rumor of War, Horn of Africa) is one of the more successful enhancers of the factual, largely because he writes intensely about his own experiences, which were dramatic and perilous. Caputo, 42, served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Viet Nam during the mid-'60s. He returned ten years later to cover the fall of Saigon for the Chicago Tribune. As a journalist, he also rode camels with Eritrean rebels in Ethiopia and was shot in both feet by Muslim militiamen in Beirut.

Substantial parts of DelCorso's Gallery are set in Viet Nam and Lebanon; the novel is not only about war but also about the relationship between morals and aesthetics. Nicholas DelCorso, the proletarian hero with a limp caused by an old wound, acts as if the good and the beautiful are inseparable. He is an award-winning news photographer who, like a Hemingway bullfighter...