Senor IBANEZ' new novel, _Mare Nostrum_ (CONSTABLE), is ostensibly a yarn about spies and submarines, its hero a gallant Spanish captain, _Ulysses Ferragut_, scion of a long line of sailormen. And there can be no doubt of the proper anti-German sentiments of this stout fellow, even though his impetuous passion for _Freya Talberg_, a Delilah in the service of the enemy, did make him store a tiny island with what the translator will persist in calling combustibles, meaning, one supposes, fuel. But more fundamentally it is an affectionate song of praise of the Mediterranean and the dwellers on its littoral, especially the fiery and hardy sailors of Spain, and of Spaniards, in particular the Valencians and Catalonians. Signor IBANEZ' method is distinctly discursive; he gives, for instance, six-and-twenty consecutive pages to the description of the inmates of the Naples Aquarium and is always ready to suspend his story for a lengthy disquisition on any subject, person or place that interests him. This puts him peculiarly at the mercy of his transliterator, who has a positive genius for choosing the wrong word and depriving any comment of its subtlety, any well-made phrase of its distinction. Even plain narrative such as the following is none too attractive:--"The voluminous documents would become covered with dust on his table and Don Esteban would have to saddle himself with the dates in order that the end of the legal procedures should not slip by." What ingenuous person authorises this sort of "authorised translation"? * * * * *