["The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin", US title for "Pincher Martin",] is one of the most remarkable books of recent years—a short novel which, though it has no explicit social reference, profoundly expresses the philosophic pessimism that has affected so many European intellectuals since the Second World War…. All the twinges of [Christopher Martin's] battered body, the flutters of his agonized spirit, the stirrings of his tortured consciousness register in Mr. Golding's craggy yet highly sensitized prose…. This is more than good description; it is a rendering of sensation into language, the articulation of an experience almost beyond the reach of words.

But "The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin" is not a novel about man's struggle to survive. For a while, it looks as though it may turn out to be yet another celebration of the human will to live, and then Mr. Golding unobtrusively begins nudging...