A tale of enormous suspense and growing horror, The Fox in the Attic
is the widely acclaimed first part of Richard Hughes's monumental
historical fiction, "The Human Predicament." Set in the early 1920s, the
book centers on Augustine, a young man from an aristocratic Welsh family
who has come of age in the aftermath of World War I. Unjustly suspected
of having had a hand in the murder of a young girl, Augustine takes
refuge in the remote castle of Bavarian relatives. There his hopeless
love for his devout cousin Mitzi blinds him to the hate that will lead
to the rise of German fascism. The book reaches a climax with a
brilliant description of the Munich putsch and a disturbingly intimate
portrait of Adolph Hitler.
The Fox in the Attic, like its no less remarkable sequel The Wooden
Shepherdess, offers a richly detailed, Tolstoyan overview of the modern
world in upheaval. At once a novel of ideas and an exploration of the
dark spaces of the heart, it is a book in which the past returns in all
its original uncertainty and strangeness.