Original sentence: " - Happy New Year, Kamerades, 1954 hardcover edition jacket flap." - Norman Mailer, upon meeting Lowry over drinks in Paris, 1948."Best writer in America today" - Ernest Hemingway, in response to an Italian publisher who asked him what he thought of Lowry."Lowry's world is a brutal one, and he describes it with a realism underlaid with a disquieting element of fantasy."[We] were like young contestants vying for the same prize so neither of us was particularly ready to compliment the other nor to look for friendship.But whether Lowry is describing an abortion with a graphic power that makes the reader hurt inside, or telling of a mother's rediscovery of the maternal instinct, or probing into the lives of a group of G.Heroes and bums and ordinary guys walk through these pages; tarts and mothers and working girls are their companions.s and officers trapped on the meaningless treadmill of overseas life, he hits hard and true