“The South Wind” (1917) is the most famous book of the English writer Norman Douglas (1868–1952), which has gone through more than two dozen reprints in its homeland and translated into many languages, is being published for the first time in Russia. The action of the novel takes place on the fictional island of Nepenthe, the name of which means a medicine that relieves pain and suffering or “bliss”, but it is here that the heroes face difficult trials...

...Douglas has such an original way of thinking that, reading “ “South Wind”, no, no, but you will praise the author for the precisely found form of expression of very subtle, barely perceptible things... After all, in fact, only the tiniest part of what we call the “essence of things” ends up on the pages of novels, and the main thing usually remains "behind the scenes". This is precisely where I find the merit of The South Wind: it captures much of what is hidden, unspoken, and this once again proves in what a tight grip of literary conventions the writer, and with him we, the readers, usually find ourselves. Virginia Woolf Let me relax and grumble a little. I'm seventy-five. Over the years, I have read so many novels that there would be enough for all seven hundred and fifty. For more than twenty years, I, a professor of English literature at the University of Edinburgh, have been reviewing books - dozens and hundreds of French and English books. The next twenty years - already at the beginning of the so-called new century - were spent searching for a truly “new” novel that would not be embarrassing to recommend to a friend. And here's the result: two books. Second in priority, but not in importance, belongs to Norman Douglas - this is his “South Wind”. George Saintsbury I agree that your masterpiece is “South Wind”, and the most impressive work is “Old Calabria”... Indeed, you never cease to be amazed an endless play of fantasy, despite the fact that the overall impression is extremely capacious and holistic. It is very rare, I tell you, in our lean times to come across such rivers of milk. You have everything over the edge: encyclopedic scholarship, humor, artistry, philosophical depth, and what’s amazing is that you understand that all this is just the tip of the iceberg...Lytton Strechey