Appleby on Ararat (1941)
Blurb:
My review:
A very strange and silly book which yet succeeds in being entertaining, despite (or because of?) that very quality. The plot is as exotic and lush as the setting: Appleby and a small group of Empirers are shipwrecked on a Pacific island inhabited by sinister archaeologists, German spies and transvestites. Although there are the usual Innesian linguistic blocks (e.g., at one point the heroine is described as “being as yet unaware of being obscurely conscious of offence”), the book is remarkably well-written, even if steeped overmuch in Freud.