And No Man's Wit: Rose Macaulay

In Spain, on the eve of the Second World War, a group of English lefties and a right-wing Spanish aristocrat travel from town to town in search of an International Brigader who disappeared at the end of the Civil War. Very little happens, there is a great deal of entertaining talk about politics, history and geography and- towards the end, suddenly, surprisingly- a profoundly moving eruption of what we would now call magical realism.

Rose Macaulay published her first novel in 1906 and her last in 1956.  She was considerably more famous in her lifetime than she is now. A while back I posted it as my opinion that novelists lose the plot once they turn sixty. And now along comes Macaulay to prove me wrong. Her early novels are excellent, but the last three are masterpieces. This is the first of them. It came out in 1940 and - as far as I can make out- has never been reprinted- which is shocking. The other two are The World My Wilderness and The Towers of Trebizond.