SOURCE: A review of The Return of Philip Latinovicz, in The New York Times Book Review, February 15, 1970, pp. 4, 26.

In the following review, Pawel praises Krleza's "demythification" of evil and commitment to moral and artistic integrity in The Return of Philip Latinovicz.

Miroslav Krleza (Kirlezha), the formidable Croat who has dominated Yugoslavia's literary landscape for nearly half a century, remains virtually unknown in the West. His is not the only such case and again reflects at least in part the parochialism of Western publishers and their public; but the ambiguities of Krleza's themes and politics have no doubt contributed to the neglect of a writer who, ironically, happens to be quintessentially Western—or more precisely Central European—in the scope and sources of his work.

Born in 1893 in the then Austrian city of Zagreb, raised in a Budapest military academy, Krleza came of age in the twilight gloom of...