Books: The Editors Like

BY MARY BARNARID

A fine, sharp, uncluttered translation of a muchmishandled poet, the direct, colloquial imagery crackling even in the smallest fragments, with a justly admiring foreword by Dudley Fitts, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, $1.25.

The seventh volume in the very useful Complete Greek Tragedies series includes Hecuba, translated by William Arrowsmith; Andromache, translated by John Frederick Nims; The Trojan Women, translated by Richmond Lattimore; and Ion, translated by Ronald Frederick Willetts; and all of them arc good. The book is edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, $3.95.

A TRANSLATION OF XENOPHON’S ANABASIS BY W. H. D. ROUSE

A really first-class military reporter, Xenophon deserves a reading by anyone who likes a brisk, exciting story, and the long march from the Euphrates to the Black Sea is just that all the way. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS, $3.95.

True History AND Lucius or the Ass

A very amusing translation by Paul Turner of the second-century Syrian, Lucian, who evidently was, among other things, an unconscious forebear of Rabelais, for the True History in particular reveals one of the least trammeled imaginations of all time. INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS, $3.00.

Untimely Death BY CYRIL HARE

An off-again, on-again, gone-again corpse and a was-it or wasn’t-it murder form a nice puzzle in the English cabinetmaker style, with rural types and an aesthetic jurist For comedy relief. MACMILLAN, $3.25.

Singing in the Shrouds BY NGAIO MARSH

Superintendent Alleyn back on the briny deep, amusingly hampered by a covey of bird-witted passengers and a grampus of a captain who flatly refuses to admit that a murderer could be aboard his ship, LITTLE, BROWN, $3.50,

The Dead Man’s Knoch BY JOHN DICKSON CARR

Mr. Carr’s ingenuity with locked rooms is godlike and inexhaustible. This time Dr. Fell unravels a puzzle which proves, as usual, to be simple as slapjack after it has driven the reader mad with curiosity, also as usual. HARPER, $2.95.