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The Month of the Falling Leaves (1963)

by Bruce Marshall

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A British philosopher runs into difficulties when he is mistaken for a spy while lecturing in Poland.
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The Month of Falling Leaves by Bruce Marshall was originally published in 1963 at the height of the Cold War. It is a work of fiction ostensibly constructed on the theme of espionage behind the Iron Curtain, in this instance in Poland. The protagonist is an English professor of philosophy, Harold Hilliard, author of "The Dysteleological Surd", evidently a work which treats what C.S. Lewis called "The Problem of Pain" as proof that there is no benevolent creator who cares for the well-being of his creatures.

Hilliard, as one might expect, is a prophet not honored to any extent in his native land, but for reasons that remain obscure is something of a minor big hit in Poland. In fact, he is invited to lecture on the topic of his book to a Polish metaphysical society. Why such a society should have any cultural purchase in materialistic Communist Poland is not clear.

Hilliard's excursion becomes the jumping off point for a dark comedy of errors as a result of the mistaken identity or classic "wrong man" theme found in multiple Alfred Hitchcock films. The Polish state security organs, in the person of one Karminsksi, pursues Hilliard as a spy being inserted into Poland to take out or to deliver intelligence to an operative in a British run network inside Poland who goes by the code name Sardine. Hilliard's putative code name is Whale and there are other characters apparently known as Kipper and Caviare.

Hilliard's only real crime consists of trying to exchange Polish zlotys for dollars and pounds in a black market transaction to get a better deal than he could realize via the official exchange rate. Marshall, who was at one time an accountant by trade, endows Hilliard with the ability to perform a number of back of the envelope calculations that enable him to figure out the bottom line profit he will return home with after the expenses he incurred, and the commission owed his publisher.

Eventually, after a series of chance encounters with multiple characters all of which reinforce Karminski's belief in Hilliard's guilt, Hilliard and a female companion, Miss Zamorska, are taken into custody and Hilliard is confronted with a moral decision that may doom his fellow suspects to prison and torture but obtain release for himself and the freedom to escape back to Britain, the land of comfortable Western bourgeois materialistic consumption. In any case, a betrayal in some sense is the inevitable consequence of any choice he makes short of sacrificing himself.

Along the way Marshall introduces a colorful cast of characters, some ridiculous, some sinister, but all of them critical in some way to the eventual outcome of the plot.

Not so in between the lines, Marshall alludes to the conflict among the competing moral codes of Western liberalism, Communism and "Catholic Poland" as exemplified by Hilliard, Karminski and Zamorska. The Month of Falling Leaves is both a fast paced entertainment and a meditation on serious themes that earn it a highest recommendation. ( )
  citizencane | Jan 1, 2023 |
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A British philosopher runs into difficulties when he is mistaken for a spy while lecturing in Poland.

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