Against This Rock

FOR his new book, Louis Zara has had the good fortune to utilize one of the most thought-provoking of all historical personages, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and the background of the Renaissance and Reformation worlds. Charles V was a dynast of the first magnitude. He ruled the Netherlands and the Indies, Naples, Spain, Austria, Burgundy, and Sicily. He married his sisters and his children into the reigning families of countries which he did not directly control. His life, which he considered dedicated to coërdinating the world into a great and single Catholic state, was a succession of bloody battles and autos-da-fé. And finally he renounced his dream, abdicated his throne, and went to spend his remaining years in religious retirement. and gluttony. Mr. Zara has presented us with 635 pages of rousing historical narrative — for the most part true. And although his novel is conventional, overwritten, and given to sentimentality where its hero is concerned, it makes engaging reading, especially when the actual stuff of memoirs and histories speaks.