SOURCE: "Silver-Cord Motif," in New York Herald Tribune Books, August 10, 1930, pp. 3-4.

A Mexican-born educator and critic who specialized in Spanish literature but also was an authority on Franz Kafka, Flores published extensively in English and Spanish. In addition, he edited more than a dozen books—including The Kafka Problem (1946), Franz Kafka Today (1958), The Kafka Debate (1977), and Explain to Me: Some Stories of Kafka (1983)—and translated the works of major Spanish and South American authors into English. In the following review of the two short works collected in The Family—"The Kiss to the Leper" and "Gentrix"—Flores lauds Mauriac's "understanding of the heart."

With strange vehemence Mauriac spurs categorical imperatives on to combat. He is an Ibsenite in the grand manner—perhaps the last of Ibsen's inheritors. Only great conflicts concern him. By stressing metaphysical concepts the novelist is likely to lose control of everyday contingencies, and...