In Hazard

What novels were published in 1938?

There’s a good crop by Margery Allingham, Eric Ambler, Elizabeth Bowen, Victor Canning, Agatha Christie, Cecil Day-Lewis, Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca), Lawrence Durrell, Graham Greene (Brighton Rock), Henry Miller, Ellery Queen, Georges Simenon, John Steinbeck, Rex Stout, Evelyn Waugh (Scoop) and TH White (The Sword in the Stone) among many others. They are all listed on Wikipedia; well not quite all.

Erskine Childers (The Riddle of the Sands) and H.G. Wells (War in the Air) foretold the First World War in fiction. I am not aware of novels overtly prophesying the Second World war although there must be some. Indeed Richard Hughes’ 1938 novel, In  Hazard, overlooked by Wikipedia, may be one. You will remember Richard Hughes from a 2018 post, The Fox in the Attic. In Hazard is very different not least because it is entirely set aboard a steam ship; a claustrophobic canvas which Hughes uses to great effect.

“The Archimedes is a modern merchant steamship in tip-top condition, and in the summer of 1929 it has been picking up goods along the eastern seaboard of the United States before making a run to China. A little overloaded, perhaps—the oddly assorted cargo includes piles of old newspapers and heaps of tobacco—the ship departs for the Panama Canal from Norfolk, Virginia, on a beautiful autumn day. Before long, the weather turns unexpectedly rough—rougher in fact than even the most experienced members of the crew have ever encountered. The Archimedes, it turns out, has been swept up in the vortex of an immense hurricane, and for the next four days it will be battered and mauled by wind and waves as it is driven wildly off course. Caught in an unremitting struggle for survival, both the crew and the ship will be tested as never before.

Based on detailed research into an actual event, Richard Hughes’s tale of high suspense on the high seas is an extraordinary story of men under pressure and the unexpected ways they prove their mettle—or crack. Yet the originality, art, and greatness of In Hazard stem from something else: Hughes’s eerie fascination with the hurricane itself, the inhuman force around which this wrenching tale of humanity at its limits revolves. Hughes channels the furies of sea and sky into a piece of writing that is both apocalyptic and analytic. In Hazard is an unforgettable, defining work of modern adventure.” (New York Review Books)

Is it more than a great novel about humanity under extreme pressure trying to survive in a ship close to being wrecked in extreme weather conditions? Is it maybe an allegory of what Hughes fears lies ahead for humanity? A storm of unimaginable ferocity that will almost destroy much of the world, pitching Mankind to extremes of existence. Whatever it is, it is a great novel and perhaps the best of the 1938 crop.