Last Name	First Name	Language	Annotation
Kadare	Ismail	Albanian	Ismail Kadare. The Three-Arched Bridge. Tr. John Hodgson. Arcade Publishing. 1997. 192 pp. Cloth: $21.95; ISBN 1-55970-368-7. Set in a small Balkan village in 1377, The Three-Arched Bridge is a tale of legend, deceit, and ethnic war. When construction of a strategically important bridge is mysteriously delayed by repeated sabotage, a macabre ancient legend is remembered. The fable tells of the building of a castle. Everything built during the day was destroyed at night until, advised by a wise man, the castle builders sealed up one of their wives in the walls as a human sacrifice. Myth becomes shocking when the body of a mason is found immured in one of the bridge's three arches. The mason's death stems the violence for a while, but when seven Turkish horsemen descend on the bridge shortly after it is completed, it is clear to all that the mason's blood will not be the last to flow into the river that is Europe's last line of defense against the encroaching Ottoman empire.
Kafka	Franz	German	Franz Kafka. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Tr. Malcolm Pasley. New York. Penguin. 2000. 216 pp. Paper: $11.95; ISBN 0-14-028336-6. Penguin Great Books of the 20^th Century. With the opening sentence of "The Metamorphosis," Franz Kafka introduced modern humanity to its interior condition. After awaking to discover he has been transformed into an enormous insect, Gregor Samsa becomes an object of disgrace to his family and is left to hide away within the confines of his room. An imaginative parable of alienation, "The Metamorphosis" is also an absurdly comic tale whose narrative effects remain revolutionary today. Other pieces by Kafka collected in this edition are Meditation, a group of his early studies; "The Judgement," his powerful statement on the father-son conflict; "The Stoker," the first chapter of the unfinished novel Amerika; "In the Penal Colony," perhaps his most disturbing piece; A Country Doctor, tales written just before he contracted tuberculosis; the story "The Coal-Scuttle Rider;" and A Fasting Artist, his final collection of stories. Together, these works reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary depth of his imagination.
Kafu	Nagai	Japanese	Nagai Kafu. American Stories [Amerika monogatari]. Tr. and intro. Mitsuko Iriye. New York. A Pacific Basin Institute Book by Columbia University Press. 2000 [1908]. 272 pp. Cloth: $24.50; SBN 0-231-11790-6. Modern Asian Literature. Like de Tocqueville a century earlier, Nagai Kafu (1879-1959) casts a fresh eye on vibrant and varied America—world fairs, concert halls, and college campuses; saloons, the immigrant underclass, and red-light districts. The stories paint a broad landscape of the challenges of American life for the poor, the foreign born, and the disaffected, peopled with crisp individual portraits that reveal the daily disappointments and occasional euphoria of modern life. Mitsuko Iriye's introduction provides important cultural and biographical background about the author's upbringing in rapidly modernizing Japan, as well as literary context for the collections. Kafu is best known in America for A Strange Tale from East of the River, which is included in Edward Seidensticker's Kafu the Scribbler.
Kaga	Otohiko	Japanese	Otohiko Kaga. Riding the East Wind: A Novel of War and Peace [Ikari no nai fune]. Tr. Ian Hideo Levy. Tokyo and New York. Kodansha International. 1999 [Kodansha, Tokyo, 1982]. 520 pp. Cloth: $28.00; ISBN 4-7700-2049-X. Riding the East Wind is the powerful account of a family loyal to its principles and to each other. Through the story of this real-life group of people, Otohiko Kaga examines the tension between the war-hungry Japanese military regime and the diplomats striving to preserve peace. As All Quiet on the Western Front did for Germany, this haunting narrative humanizes the "enemy," reminding readers of the true consequences of war. Kaga is regarded as a master of the Western-style epic in a country where the short story and novella had been the main vehicles of serious fiction. Riding the East Wind is his first novel to appear in English. Ian Hideo Levy received the American Book Award for The Ten Thousand Leaves, a translation of the classic Japanese poetry anthology, the Manyoshu. He has also become the first Westerner ever recognized as a writer of original Japanese fiction with the publication of The Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard.
Kahn	Paul	Chinese	Paul Kahn. The Secret History of the Mongols: The Origin of Chingis Khan (Expanded Edition). Cheng & Tsui. 1998 [1984]. 209 pp. Paper: ISBN 0-88727-299-1. C&T Asian Culture Series. The original Secret History of the Mongols is perhaps the oldest text written in the Mongolian language. It was composed in the mid-13^th century, just decades after the death of Chingis Khan in 1227, and for many generations was the private property of the royal family. This uniquely detailed account of the rise of the great "world conqueror" no doubt partly served as a confirmation of the Mongolian nobility's status, and therefore may be compared to the Aeneid of Virgil and The Song of Roland. Since no manuscript of the original Mongolian text has yet been located, the actual source of the present text is a Chinese version known as the Yuan Ch'ao Pi Shih, which was copied out during the Ming Dynasty, after the Mongols had been driven from China. Paul Kahn has adapted the scholarly English translation of Francis Woodman Cleaves into colloquial free verse, making this ancient narrative accessible to all readers. Although it opens in the mythical past, The Secret History is also a source of historical facts, not only about the life and career of Chingis Khan, but about the daily life, social structures, and tribal customs of the people of Central Asia.
Kaiser	Gloria	German	Gloria Kaiser. Doña Leopoldina: The Habsburg Empress of Brazil [Dona Leopoldina. Die Habsburgerin auf Brasiliens Thron]. Tr. Lowell A. Bangerter. Ariadne Press [Verlag Styria, 1994]. 1998. 379 pp. Paper: $21.50; ISBN 1-57241-022-1. On an open church square in Rio de Janeiro, escaped slaves perform a peculiar play in which they place God on trial and condemn Him for doing nothing about their misery. Oppressed and dehumanized by a cruel and corrupt colonial order, they lack the power to alter their condition until a foreigner, a Habsburg princess, a woman who suffers with them beneath the tyranny of an insensitive patriarchical order that robs her of her dignity, demonstrates the courage and determination to change their lives and point the history of Brazil in a new direction.
Kaiser	Gloria	German	Gloria Kaiser. Pedro II of Brazil: Son of the Habsburg Empress [Pedro II von Brasilien. Der Sohn der Habsburgerin]. Tr. and afterword Lowell A. Bangerter. Riverside, CA. Ariadne Press. 2000 [Verlag Styria, Graz, 1997]. 405 pp. Paper: $23.50; ISBN 1-57241-082-5. Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought. Translation Series. In a jungle in southern Brazil, an emperor who would perfer to be a teacher or a librarian watches in horror as a young soldier, who has just been slain, is carried off on the shoulders of a Guarani Indian. This and other events in a brutal war that lasts for five years are among the important formative experiences in the life of Pedro II, a modern "prince of peace" who successfully resolves the problems of transforming a primitive empire into a modern republic, then abdicates his throne rather than face the prospect of a civil war that would pit Brazilians against one another. This work is a continuation of Gloria Kaiser's Dona Leopoldina, also translated by Lowell Bangerter and published by Ariadne in 1998.
Kalbeck	Florian	German	Florian Kalbeck. The House of the Linsky Sisters [Das Haus der Schwestern Linsky]. Tr. Michael Mitchell. Ariadne Press [Atelier Verlag, Vienna, 1990]. 1996. 165 pp. Paper: ISBN 1-57241-026-4. The celebrated concert pianist, Clara Linné, is going through a period of artistic crisis when her twin sister Resl dies. Clara's decision to adopt the name and persona of her twin leads to involvements with four very different men. But the place is Vienna, the year is 1937, and Clara Linné, now Resl Linsky, is Jewish. Her search for fulfillment leads to involvement in the resistance and the discovery of the spiritual dimension of a Judaism she thought she had left behind. A further change of identity to protect her young pupil leads her to the extermination camps in Poland, a self-sacrifice which is the culmination of the life of a woman who, in her second existence, seeks and finds four different kinds of love. Mitchell's other translations include Gyögy Sebestyén's The Works of Solitude and A Man Too White, Gustav Meyrink's The Angel of the West Window, The Green Face, The White Dominican, and Walpurgisnacht, as well as Josef Winkler's The Serf.
Kamens	Edward	Japanese	Edward Kamens. The Three Jewels: A Study and Translation of Minamoto Tamenori's Sanboe. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan. 1998. 446 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-939512-34-3. Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies 2. In A.D. 984, a scholarly Japanese author and bureaucrat, Minamoto Tamenori, created a collection of Buddhist tales for Sonshi, an imperial princess who had just taken vows as a nun. The collection was entitled Sanboe, or "illustrations of the Three Jewels"—the Buddha, the Buddhist teachings, and the community of Buddhist monks and nuns—indicating that pictures would accompany the corresponding three volumes. The illustrations are now lost, but the text survives as one of the most intriguing contributions to the genre, offering many insights into the religion as it was understood from a literary perspective in the mid-Heian period. The Three Jewels contains two introductory chapters on the historical and literary significance of Sanboe, the translation of the complete text, and an alphabetical list of names, titles, terms, and passages in both romanized and calligraphic versions.
Karagiozis		Greek	Karagiozis: Three Classic Plays. Tr. and intro. Kostas Myrsiades and Linda Myrsiades. Pella Publishing Company. 1999. 224 pp. Paper: $15.00; ISBN 0-918618-73-8. The wildly popular Karagiozis shadow puppet theater, established as an art form soon after the War of 1821, was regarded as "frantic to the point of hysteria," and "bordering on the mad" in the post-war years after the Greek liberation from Ottoman rule. Karagiozis was attacked by westernizing elite Greeks as an Eastern vulgarity that sapped the strength of the nation, a disease that passed through the whole body of Greece, compromising its sense of heroic struggle, and an infiltrative virus exhausting the nation's sense of social purpose. In spite of such aggressive enmity, the genre survived intact, with as many as 150 players crisscrossing the mainland and Greek islands in the 1930s. The Karagiozis performance is orally transmitted through a system of apprenticeship, and by 1979, some 400 transcribed texts were in print. This volume features "Karagiozis Baker," one of the oldest texts in existence, which is taken directly from a 1973 performance by Yiorgos Haridimos, the last great master of the form. Other plays include "The Seven Beasts and Karagiozis" by Markos Xanthos, and "The Hero Katsandonis" by Kostas Manos, an epic drama that extends over three nights
Karasu	Bilgé	Turkish	Bilgé Karasu. Night [Gece]. Tr. Güneli Gün with the author. Louisiana State University Press [Ilet_im Yayinlari]. 1994. 142 pp. Cloth: $19.95; ISBN 0-8071-1849-4. Night begins as a writer's notebook. It appears as the narrative of a decent man, a writer of liberal sensibility who lives in a truly hellish place, where "nightworkers" prowl the streets, savagely murdering victims at random and leaving cryptic inscriptions about the advent of some apocalyptic "big night." It is a world of ritual mass-murder, of unrelenting paranoia and terror for its own sake, a world rife with rumor and deception. The writer tells of being blackmailed through a supremely cynical political maneuver into attending a foreign conference as a showpiece delegate. Set alongside the writer's story is the story of the creation of the book itself. In asides and footnotes, the writer decides on one narrative strategy, second-guesses it, then tries another, as he works his way toward an ending he cannot quite imagine. Winner of the Pegasus Prize for Literature. Karasu's other works include Kiosk of Destiny and The Guide.
Kaschnitz	Marie Luise	German	Marie Luise Kaschnitz. Long Shadows [Lange Schatten]. Tr. Anni Whissen. Camden House. 1995. 149 pp. Cloth: $44.95; ISBN 1-57113-021-7. The stories in Long Shadows explore various facets of the human condition, from the loneliness of childhood to the insecurity of adulthood and the vulnerability of old age. Works include "The Red Net," "Brother Benda," "The Fat Girl," "A Noon Hour in Mid'June," "Thaw," "Street Lamps," and "The Everlasting Light." Whissen recently published Kaschnitz's The House of Childhood.
Kassem	Abdel-Hakim	Arabic	Abdel-Hakim Kassem. The Seven Days of Man [Ayy_m al-ins_n al-sab'a]. Tr. Joseph Norment Bell. Northwestern University Press [1969]. 1996. Cloth: $25.95; ISBN 0-8101-1415-1. In a country village in Egypt's Nile Delta, a group of men prepare for their annual visit to the city of Tanta, site of the mosque-shrine of the great Sufi saint Ahmad al-Badawi, to whose brotherhood the men belong. The preparation and the journey take seven days─the same length of time as creation─and in those seven days we see how this village is a microcosm of the universe. The narrator of the novel, Abdel-Aziz, is the son of the revered leader of the Sufi brothers. In the first chapter, Abdel-Aziz, a young child, describes the assembly of the Sufis with all the love and worshipful affection of an innocent. The second chapter finds the narrator in his early teens, sleeping still in a common room with his parents and sisters, but becoming more interested in the girls in the village than in the men. When the brotherhood actually visits Tanta, Abdel-Aziz is in school there and is thoroughly embarassed by the "backwardness" of his father and his men. Toward the end of the book, when the Sufi brothers take part in the great celebration of the pilgrimage to al-Badawi's shrine, Abdel-Aziz's various ages come together in a bitter father-son confrontation. Bell is professor of Arabic at the University of Bergen in Norway.
Katz	Menke	Yiddish	Menke Katz. This Little Land. Trs. Rivke Katz and Aaron Kramer. Cross-Cultural Communications. 1992. 48 pp. Cloth: $15.00; ISBN 0-89304-325-7. Paper: $5.00; 0-89304-326-5. Jewish Writers Chapbook 1. Born in Lithuania and an emigré to the U.S., Katz authored 18 books of poetry, nine in Yiddish. His work has been translated into 50 languages. Translations in this volume include "The First Rain," "An Orange," "A Deserted Vineyard," and "Evening in Safad."
Katz	Menke	Yiddish	Menke Katz. This Little Land. Trs. Rivke Katz and Aaron Kramer. Cross-Cultural Communications. 1992. 48 pp. Cloth: $15.00; ISBN 0-89304-325-7. Paper: $7.50; ISBN 0-89304-326-5. Jewish Writers Chapbook 1. Poems include "Rainy Days in Safad," "Princes of Pig Street," "On the Death of a Day-Old Child," "Isiah on Freedom," "Queens of Autumn," and "Against Lock or Rhyme."
Kawabata	Yasunari	Japanese	Yasunari Kawabata. First Snow on Fuji [Fuji no hatsuyuki]. Tr. Michael Emmerich. Counterpoint Press. 1999 [1959]. 224 pp. Cloth: $24.00; ISBN 1-58243-022-5. First Snow on Fuji is the first English edition of this important collection from Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata's late work. Publication of this volume, which carries the distinction of having been assembled by Kawabata himself, marks the 100^th anniversary of Kawabata's birth. These nine stories plus a brief play (one of only two works he created for the stage) are filled with their author's unerring vision of human psychology, with forms of presence and absence, with being, with memory and loss of memory, and with not knowing. The atmosphere is unmistakably Japanese in its delicate, understated, and lyrical descriptions. Kawabata is best known for his novels Snow Country, The Sound of the Mountain, and Thousand Cranes. Michael Emmerich has translated works by Mori Ogai, Yokomitsu Riichi, and Enchi Fumiko. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter[Taketori Monogatari]. Modern rewriting by Yasunari Kawabata. Tr. Donald Keene. Kodansha International (Tokyo) and Kodansha America. 1998. 179 pp. Paper: $25.00; ISBN 4-7700-2329-4. Bilingual. An important clue to the date of composition of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is the mention at the end of the tale that smoke still rose from Mount Fuji, for we know that by 905 A.D., the volcano had ceased eruption. Regardless of exactly when the tale was first set down on paper, it is the oldest surviving Japanese work of fiction; The Tale of Genjii (written about 1010) referred to it as the “ancestor of all romances.” Donald Keene published a previous English translation in the early 1960s in the journal Monumenta Nipponica, which he revised for a new version that was never published. This volume combines the work of an unknown Japanese writer of over a thousand years ago, the translation by a master of modern Japanese, illustrations by Masayuki Miyata (the most prominent artist of kirie, or paper-cut pictures) and a translation by the American Keene, who has devoted his life to the study of Japanese literature.
Keineg	Paol	French	Paol Keineg. Boudica. Tr. Keith Waldrop. Burning Deck/Small Press Distributions. 1994. 64 pp. Paper: $6.00; ISBN 0-930901-94-0. Tacitus tells, in his Annals, how the Romans were defeated by "a simple woman." On a chariot with her two daughters, who had been raped by Roman legionnaires, Queen Boudica made the round of the Breton tribes, inciting them to follow her into battle and, in the first round, defeated the Roman invader. Keineg's sequence of 40 poems, with their hammered rhythm, their echoes of blows given and taken, raises a monument to Queen Boudica's courage and, by bold anachronisms, to the Bretons that have resisted assimilation through the centuries. Waldrop has also translated the Surrealist collaboration Ralentir travaux (Exact Change).
Kenyon	Jane	Russian	Jane Kenyon. A Hundred White Daffodils. Graywolf Press. 1999. 216 pp. Cloth: $23.95; ISBN 1-55597-291-8. A book of nonfiction as well as poetry, A Hundred White Daffodils includes Kenyon’s translations of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova and insights into how Kenyon chose her as her muse, a variety of prose pieces about the writing life, transcripts of earlier interviews, and an unfinished visionary poem entitled “Woman, Why Are You Weeping?” Jane Kenyon’s Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova was published by Ally Press in 1985 with the Russian text en face. Her introduction, which is her only essay in literary criticism, records her gratitude to Robert Bly, a sentiment she expands on in her essay on Bly, “Kicking the Eggs.” Kenyon also describes her collaboration with Vera Sandomirsky Dunham, who worked on translations from the Russian with other American poets such as Bly, Louis Simpson, and William Jay Smith. About the translations, which are free-verse versions of rhymed and metered poems, Kenyon states, “Because it is impossible to translate with fidelity to form and to image, I have sacrificed form for image. Image embodies feeling, and this embodiment is perhaps the greatest treasure of lyric poetry. In translating, I mean to place the integrity of the image over all other considerations.”
Kenzaburo		Japanese	_e Kenzaburo. The Pinch Runner Memorandum [Pinchi ranna ch_sho]. Trs. Michiko N. Wilson and Michael K. Wilson. New York. M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 1994. 251 pp. Cloth: $35.00; ISBN 1-56324-183-8. Paper: $17.95; ISBN 1-56324-184-6. The birth of Oe's mentally handicapped baby boy in 1963 precipitated a series of stories, novellas, and novels that pursue an alternative view of the world and humankind. Pinch Runner is part of what Oe calls the "idiot son" narratives. In this particular novel, the son develops from a simple retarded boy into a symbol of unspoiled nature. Based on the metaphor of a sandlot baseball pinch runner, the novel centers around the exchange of identities of a father and a son who confront the leader of the political underworld. Also introduced is a third voice, that of the idiot son Mori who speaks to his "switched-over" father through the conduit of their clasped hands. This book won the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature; _e has also received most of the major literary prizes in Japan plus the Europelia literary award, and a nomination for the 1986 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Kerschbaumer	Marie-Thérèse	German	Marie-Thérèse Kerschbaumer. Woman's Face of Resistance: Seven Reports [Der weibliche Name des Widerstands]. Tr. Lowell A. Bangerter. Ariadne Press. 1996. 260 pp. Paper: ISBN 0-57241-027-2. A poet, two scholars, a nun, an unidentified Gypsy woman, a tailor's apprentice, a teacher, and a laborer--all of them are Austrian women who perish as victims of Nazi oppression. Their respective stories provide deep insight into the impact of German fascism on the inner lives of individuals. Each "report" conveys an intimate contact with the atmosphere of the times and a sense of the relationship between the protagonists and people who face the same social and political problems in the contemporary world. Bangerter's translations include I Want to Speak (Margareta Glas-Larsson), The Baron and the Fish (Peter Marginter), The Bengal Tiger and Three Flute Notes (Jeannie Ebner), The Condemned Judge (Janko Ferk), Lerida, or; The Long Shadow (Alexander Giese), In Foreign Cities (Anna Mitgutsch), and The Register (Norbert Gstrein).
Kertész	Imre	Hungarian	(and German) Imre Kertész. Kaddish for a Child Not Born [Kaddis a meg nem szvületett gyermekért]. Trs. Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson. Northwestern University Press [Publ. Magvet_, Budapest, 1990/Rowohlt. Berlin Verlag GmbH, 1992]. 1997. 95 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-8101-1176-4. Paper: ISBN 0-8101-1161-6. The story unfolds at a retreat as the narrator, a middle-aged survivor of the Holocaust, tries to explain to a friend that he cannot bring a child into a world where the Holocaust has occurred and could occur again. In an intricate narrative, we learn of the narrator's myriad disappointments: his unsuccessful literary career, his failed marriage, his ex-wife's new family and children--children that could have been his own.
Kertész	Imre	Hungarian	Imre Kertész. Kaddish for a Child Not Born [Kaddis a meg nem szvületett gyermekért]. Tr. Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson. Hydra Books/Northwestern University Press. 1999 [1997; Publ. Magvető, Budapest, 1990]. 95 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 0-8101-1161-6. Imre Kertész's novella is a mesmerizing tale of identity and memory—the story of a middle-aged man taking stock of his life in the ever-present shadow of the Holocaust. The story unfolds at a writers' retreat as the narrator, who is a survivor, explains to a friend that he cannot bring a child into a world where the Holocaust has occurred and could occur again. In an intricate narrative, we learn of his myriad disappointments: his unsuccessful literary career, his failed marriage, his ex-wife's new family and children—children that could have been his own. Imre Kertész is a distinguished translator from the German and author of the critically acclaimed novel, Fateless, also translated by Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson (Northwestern, 1996).
Khadra	Yasmina	French	Yasmina Khadra. In the Name of God [Les agneaux de Seigneur]. Tr. Linda Black. London. The Toby Press. 2000 [Editions Julliard, Paris, 1998]. 213 pp. Cloth: 1-902881-06-0. Paper: $12.95; ISBN I-902881-11-7. No one knows who Yasmina Khadra is, or whether the author is man or a woman. "What matters," stated a leading French critic, "is that Yasmina Khadra is today one of Algeria's most important writers." In the Name of God bears out this observation. In the story of one small village, Khadra portrays the horrifying reality of Algeria's fundamentalist uprisings with stunning visceral power. While western newspapers have reported the numbers of men slaughtered, women raped, villages burned, Khadra's novel gives them unforgettable faces and powerfully attests to the worst in human nature. The author, who has chosen to keep her/his identity secret for security reasons, has previously published three detective novels set in Algeria: Morituri, Double Blanc, and L'automne des chimères.
Kharms	Daniil	Russian	Daniil Kharms. Incidences. Ed. and Tr. Neil Cornwell. Serpent's Tail/Consortium. 1994. 224 pp. Paper: $14.99; ISBN 1-85242-306-4. This collection of stories conveys the precarious nature of life in Soviet Russia. Incidences is the first complete edition of Kharms' fiction in English, and it includes such works as "The Carpenter Kushakov," "The Optical Illusion," "Lynch Law," "Sleep Teases a Man," "Rebellion," and "The Nasty Character."
Khoury	Elias	Arabic	Elias Khoury. The Journey of Little Gandhi [Rihlat Ghandi al-saghir]. Tr. Paula Haydar. University of Minnesota Press [D_r al-_d_b, Beirut, 1989]. 1993. 195 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-8166-1995-6. Little Gandhi "...does not offer any definitive answers for the dilemmas of life, war, and invasion. The novel's structure with its embedded stories parallels the ‘Lebanese war' with its seemingly unresolved events. Although the ‘journey' is tragic for most of the characters in this novel, the narrator, like Sheherazade, wards off death by his stories" (Foreword). Khoury is the editor of the literary supplement of al-Nahar and has published two novels, Little Mountain and Gates of the City.
Khoury-Ghata	Vénus	French	Vénus Khoury-Ghata. Here There Was Once A Country. Tr. and intro. Marilyn Hacker. Oberlin, OH. Oberlin College Press. 2001. 101 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 0-932440-89-4. FIELD Translation Series. Lebanese writer Vénus Khoury-Ghata blends French surrealism with Arabic poetry's communal narrative mode in three stunning poetic sequences. She writes, "Nourished by two languages, I write in Arabic through the French language. For years, my first drafts were written in both languages, the Arabic going from right to left on the page and the French from left to right: they crossed each other's paths in the middle. Twenty-eight years in Paris haven't cured me of my mother's tongue." Khoury-Ghata has published many collections of poems and novels, including Anthologie personelle, new and selected poems (1997) and Elle dit (1999). Her work has been translated into Italian, Russian, Dutch, German, English and Arabic. Marilyn Hacker's translations of Khoury-Ghata's poems have appeared in periodicals in the United States, England, and Ireland.
Khvoshchinskaya	Nadezhda	Russian	Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya. The Boarding-School Girl [Pansionerka]. Tr., annot., and intro. Karen Rosneck. Evanston. Northwestern University Press. 2000 [Moskovskii rabochii, 1984]. 154 pp. Paper: $16.95; ISBN 0-8101-1744-4. The tale of a young woman’s not-so-sentimental education, set amid the lower provincial gentry of 19^th-century Russia, introduces English-speaking readers to a Russian writer celebrated for her humorous and spirited prose style, lively imagination, and radical approach to the themes and intellectual trends of her day. The Boarding-School Girl is the story of 15-year-old Lolenka, who encounters an exiled radical named Veretitsyn and soon after begins to question her education at a private girls’ school. Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya (1824-1889), who wrote under the pseudonym V. Krestovsky, was one of the most successful women writers of the century, enjoying a wide-ranging literary career that produced poetry, prose, drama, children’s literature, translations, and critical articles.
Kim	Chiha	Koren	Chiha Kim. Heart's Agony: Selected Poems. Tr. Won-Chung Kim and James Han. White Pine Press. 1998. 128 pp. Paper: $14.00; ISBN 1-877727-84-9. Human Rights Series 5. Born in South Korea in 1941, Chiha Kim was first imprisoned in 1964 and sentenced to death in 1974. His crime was writing poetry that provoked the military government of Chunghee Park. Worldwide efforts to save him were begun in Japan, where his work had first been published. During his imprisonment in 1975, Kim won the Lotus Prize (generally regarded as the Third World's Nobel Prize) and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in both Peace and Literature. Heart's Agony gathers poetry from all phases of his career, including poems that led to his imprisonment and torture and those written from prison. Three books of poetry by Chiha Kim are available in English: Cry of the People and Other Poems, tr. Nicola Geiger (Autumn Press, 1974); The Gold Crowned Jesus and Other Writings, tr. Choy Sun Kim and Shelley Killen (Orbis Books, 1978); and The Middle Hour: Selected Poems of Kim Chi Ha, tr. David R. McCann (Human Rights Pub., 1980).
Kimchi	Alona	Hebrew	Alona Kimchi. Lunar Eclipse [Ani Anastasia]. Tr. Yael Lotan. London. The Toby Press. 2000 [Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1996]. 277 pp. Cloth: 1-902881-28-1. Paper: $15.95; ISBN 1-902881-29-X. In the title story of Lunar Eclipse, an eight-year-old girl in a Russian immigrant family suffers from her stepfather's hostility. Her voice, like those of all the first-person narrators in this collection, reveals profound pain and sorrow transformed by unique self-awareness. Each story exposes another kind of unhappiness or misery, yet with an added quality of acute humor and verbal brutality. Stories include "Movies," "Berlin Diaries," "We'd Talk About Love," and "Nightmare Poem or The Unrealized Cure of Mor Alkabetz." Lunar Eclipse will also appear in German this year. Kimchi's first novel, Weeping Susannah, was published in Hebrew in 1999.
Kĭs	Danilo	Serbian	Danilo Kĭs. A Tomb for Boris Davidovich [Grobnica za Borisa Davidovica]. Tr. Duška Mikić-Mitchell. Intro. Joseph Brodsky. Afterword William T. Vollman. McClaean, IL. Dalkey Archive Press. 2001 [Harcourt, 1978]. 145 pp. Cloth: 11.95; ISBN 1-56478-273-5. Composed of seven dark tales, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich presents variations on the theme of political and social self-destruction throughout Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20^th century. The characters in these stories are caught in a world of political hypocrisy, which ultimately leads to death—their common fate. Although the stories are based on historical events, the beauty and precision of Danilo Kĭs's prose elevates these ostensibly "true" tales into works of literary art that transcend the politics of their time. Kĭs is the author of several novels and short story collections including Garden Ashes and Encyclopedia of the Dead.
Kleberg	Lars	Swedish	Lars Kleberg. Starfall: A Triptych [Stjärnfall]. Tr. Anselm Hollo. Northwestern University Press. 1998. 77 pp. Cloth: $22.95; ISBN 0-8101-1454-2. Starfall consists of three dramatic dialogues among real people in imagined settings. Anchoring each of the dialogues in the Russian film director and theoretician Sergei Eisenstein, whose artistic theories run throughout the book. In "The Aquarians" Eisenstein meets Bertolt Brecht in the first-class compartment of a train heading from Berlin to Moscow in May 1932. They spend the night discussing and arguing about everything from the use of Renaissance magic in art to "some kind of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk," in which everything in art is connected. "The Sorcerer's Apprentices" takes place at a meeting held in Moscow on 14 April 1935, on the occasion of performances given during a visit by a noted Chinese actor, Mei Lan-Fang, and his troupe, the prime representatives of early 20th-century "classical" Chinese theater. "Ash Wednesday," set in the Moscow Planetarium in April 1940, has Eisenstein engaged in a dialogue with the philosopher, critic, and literary historian Mikhail Bakhtin. Kleberg is a professor at the University of Stockholm. Hollo has translated works by Jaan Kross, Jakob Arjouni, and Zlatko Dizdarevic.
Klein	Olag Georg	German	Olaf Georg Klein. Aftertime [Nachzeit]. Tr. Margot Bettauer Dembo. Northwestern University Press. 1999 [Thomas Müller, Berlin, 1990]. 116 pp. Cloth: $24.95; ISBN 0-8101-1504-2. Aftertime is the story of a young woman's struggle to come to grips with the aftermath of a devastating catastrophe. In her last year at the university in Kiev and shortly before she is to take her final examinations, the narrator is persuaded by her roommate to go for a cruise on a large lake north of the city. While her friends dance in the ballroom, the young woman stands on deck, enjoying the tranquil evening. Sixty miles away, a nuclear reactor explodes. In the days that follow, panic and rumors are met with official denial of the risks to public health. Then the young woman's symptoms begin to appear. The book follows her attempts to come to grips with her small place in history, and with that history's enormous impact on her life, creating a saga with great resonance for all people living uneasily with technology in the twentieth century. Margot Bettauer Dembo is the translator of Triumph of Hope, Europa, Europa, and Lost in a Labyrinth of Red Tape.
Klíma	Ivan	Czech	Ivan Klíma. Lovers for a Day: New and Collected Stories. Tr. Gerald Turner. Grove Press. 1999. 229 pp. Cloth: $24.00; ISBN 0-8021-1651-5. Ivan Klíma has been called "one of the most important literary voices in Eastern Europe, on par with Havel, Konrad, and Harastzi."(Booklist). His previous works have established him as a writer with a uniquely intelligent and wry perspective on human affection. This anthology collects work that spans his thiry-year career, incorporating stories from the Czech publications Milenci na jednu noc [Lovers for One Night], Milenci na jeden den [Lovers for One Day] and Milostne rozhovory [Intimate Conversations]. In these stories, the dreams and frustrations of students and factory workers living under the totalitarianism of the 1960s evolve into portraits of people in the 1990s, stuggling with responsibility, fidelity, and absence, haunted by a terrible guilt when their desires become reality. Klíma's other books include the bestseller Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light and The Ultimate Intimacy, both of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year.
Kochanowski	Jan	Polish	Jan Kochanowski. Laments. Trs. Stanislaw Baranczak and Seamus Heaney. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1995. 59 pp. Cloth: $17.50; ISBN 0-374-18290-6. Bilingual. Kochanowski is one of the great Polish poets of the 16th century. Laments, beautifully rendered by contemporary poets Heaney and Baranczak, will show why he is regarded as a pioneer in his language. Because of its intimate and domestic nature, this poignant series of poems on the death of Kochanowski's young daughter was a radical and rebellious departure from the literary conventions of his day. But it is the same intimacy that now gives Laments a startling potency and realism for contemporary readers. The poems express a candid grief, a profound angst, and an undeniably modern sense of humiliation and religious doubt.
Koeppen	Wolfgang	German	Wolfgang Koeppen. Death in Rome [Der Tod in Rom]. Tr. Michael Hofmann. Penguin Books. 1994. 202 pp. Paper: $10.95; ISBN 0-14-018790-1. Four members of a German family are reunited by chance in the decaying beauty of post-war Rome: a composer, Siegfried; his estranged father, Friedrich, a burgomaster and an ex-Nazi administrator; his uncle Judejahn, a former SS general; and Judejahn's renegade son, Adolf, who is preparing himself for the Catholic priesthood. The four men recount their separate, often chilling, histories. Michael Hofmann was joint winner of the Schegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of Death in Rome.
Koeppen	Wolfgang	German	Wolfgang Koeppen. Death in Rome [Der Tod in Rom]. Tr. and intro. Michael Hofmann. New York. W. W. Norton. 2001 [Germany, 1954; Hamish Hamilton, Great Britain, 1992]. 224 pp. Paper: $12.95; ISBN 0-393-32194-0. In the words of translator Michael Hofmann, Wolfgang Koeppen's Death in Rome "is a comprehensive and brilliant provocation of an entire nation." First published to great controversy in 1954. it is only now being recognized as a classic portrait of Germany after World War II. This work completes the trilogy that earned Koeppen praise from Günter Grass in his lifetime as "the greatest living German writer." Mirroring the social and political upheaval following the fall of Nazism, Koeppen offers here the story of four members of a German family—a former SS officer, a young man preparing for the priesthood, a composer, and a government administrator—reunited by chance in the decaying beauty of postwar Rome. Wolfgang Koeppen. The Hothouse [Das Treibhaus]. Tr. Michael Hofmann. New York. W. W. Norton. 2001 [Scherz & Goverts Verlag, Stuttgart, 1953]. 234 pp. Cloth: $23.95; ISBN 0-393-04902-7. Largely unrecognized beyond Germany during his lifetime, Wolfgang Koeppen sought to make sense of German life amidst the vast political and social reconstruction of his war-ravaged nation. The Hothouse traces the final two days in the life of a minor German politician, Keetenheuve, a man disillusioned by the corruption of German politics and grieving after the sudden death of his wife. With the narrative and sexual frenzy of James Joyce, Koeppen creates a portrait of idealism crushed by political and personal compromise. Rendered in English for the first time by award-winning translator Michael Hofmann, The Hothouse is a tragic and provocative work by one of Germany's foremost post-World War II novelists.
Kohout	Pavel	Czech	Pavel Kohout. I Am Snowing: The Confessions of a Woman of Prague [Sn__ím]. Tr. Neil Bermel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux [Albrecht Knaus Verlag, 1992]. 1994. 308 pp. Cloth: $27.50; ISBN 0-374-17400-8. Set in today's Prague, I Am Snowing offers a vivid portrait of a nation in transition. When Professor Victor Král─who had left Czechoslovakia during the Communist years and has returned to lead an economic reform program─is accused of collaborating with the secret police, he turns to his lover, Petra Márová, for help. Petra, who never left the country and has tried to shut out its realities with a long series of lovers, happens to have had an affair with Josel Beneš, the man who supposedly recruited Victor into the secret police. Petra is easily able to make Josel disavow the connection. But he makes her doubt Victor's innocence and sets her off on a complex and ill-fated investigation─aimed half at vindicating Victor, half at unmasking him.
Kokoshka	Oskar	German	Oskar Kokoschka. Plays and Poems [Das schriftliche Werk]. Tr. Michael Mitchell. Afterword Karl Leydecker. Riverside, CA. Ariadne Press. 2001. 250 pp. Cloth: $29.95; ISBN 1-57241-041-8. Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought. Translation Series. The well-known painter, Oskar Kokoschka, also produced a considerable body of literary work: plays, a few poems, essays, and autobiographical stories. The present volume contains all his plays (some in more than one version) and the poems, plus one short prose passage. All the pieces in this collection, apart from the Comenius, were written in the period 1907-1918. Despite Kokoschka's dislike of the term, the plays reflect the style of Expressionism current in Germany during the period. Indeed, the early ones anticipated and, to a certain extent, helped to define Expressionism. In disrupted, often ecstatic language, mysterious, violent, and sometimes grotesque imagery, they present the man-women relationship as an elemental and ultimately tragic conflict. Comenius, which was started in the 1930s and only completed in 1972, is a large-scale historical panorama focusing on the figure of the Czech humanist and educational reformer, Jan Amos Komensky. The Night Watch, The Burning Bush, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Comenius appear here in English translation for the first time. Other titles includes the first and second version of Murderer, Hope of Women; Sphinx and Strawman, An Oddity; and Sphinx and Strawman, A Comedy for Mechanical Dolls, Michael Mitchell's translation of Kokoschka's Stories from My Life appeared in 1998, the year Mitchell won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for the best translation of a German book into English in the U.K.
Komeda-Soentgerath	Oly	German	Oly Komenda-Soentgerath. In the Shadow of Prague. Tr. Tom Beck. Forest Books/Dufour Editions [Verlag Wissen-schaft und Politik, 1990]. 1996. 110 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 1-85610-041-3. Winner of the Andreas-Gryphius Prize. This is a story of the days in Prague after World War II. Komenda as a young girl, born there, and a bilingual speaker with perfect Czech, is interned by the Revolutionary Guards just because she happens to be of German origin and by chance lives in an area once inhabited mainly by Nazis. Her long and perilous journey through various internment camps which lasts a year and a half, finally ends when she and her family arrive by cattle truck in the completely destroyed city of Cologne where she marries and tries to survive the hardships of setting up a new home with little money but plenty of ingenuity.
Komenda-Soentgerath	Olly	German	Olly Komenda-Soentgerath. Under My Eyelids [Das Schläft mir nachts unter den Lidern]. Tr. Tom Beck. Forest Books/Dufour Editions, Inc. [Heiderhoff Verlag, 1990]. 1994. 90 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 1-85610-037-5. "With their profound feminine inspiration.... Their fervent intensity combined with purity of form. Their glowing urgency, yet as tender as the merest touch on a taut spring.... Their fragility combined with an inner strength and tenacity determined to resist everything which threatens our life, everything which like a black ray of darkness might insidiously step between us and what we love and hold most precious" (Afterword). Olly Komenda-Soentgerath has been awarded various literary prizes, including the GEDOK Prize for Lyric Poetry. Translator Beck lives in Britain and since 1984 has been collaborating with the German poet-singer, Wolf Biermann, on translation of his poetry and prose. He also has translated plays by Wolfgang-Maria Bauer and Harald Kislinger for the Royal Court Theatre.
Komenda-Soentgerath	Olly	German	Olly Komenda-Soentgerath. Only When the Messengers Come [Erst wenn die boten kommen]. Tr. Tom Beck. Forest Books/Dufour Editions [Heiderhoff Verlag, Eisingen, 1992]. 1995/1996. 137 pp. Paper: $19.95; ISBN 1-85610-040-5. Bilingual. The collection of about 100 poems includes "Laws of Gravity/Fallgesetz," "The Old-New Song/Das altneue Lied," "Hoarfrost/Rauhreif," "Being at Home/Zu Hause sein," "Rubbed Out/Ausradiert," "Dance of the Veils/Schleiertanz," and "Presentiment/Ahnung."
König	Barbara	German	Barbara König. Our House [Personenperson]. Tr. Roslyn Theobald. Northwestern University Press [Carl Hanser Verlag, 1965]. 1998. 165 pp. Cloth: $26.95; ISBN 0-8101-1512-3. As this novel opens, a young woman is returning home in the company of a new love, who departs after they make a date for that evening. As Nadine prepares for her date, she converses with a series of characters: the contentious Cyril, the critical Dombrowskaya, the morbid and degenerate Anatol, the gentle Bozena. All claim insight into Nadine's past; all seem to have a stake in the young woman's future. Far from being a group of stable, supportive friends, the characters are revealed to be the elements of Nadine's fragmented personality. The experiences and desires of the various personalities are revealed, slowly exposing the core of Nadine's deep uncertainty and self-doubt. König is the author of The Beneficiary (Hydra Books/Northwestern University Press). Theobald has translated works by Botho Strauss and Lisa Fittko.
Konrád	George	Hungarian	George Konrád. The Melancholy of Rebirth: Essays from Post-Communist Central Europe 1989-1994. Tr. Michael Henry Heim. Harcourt Brace & Company. 1995. 196 pp. Paper: $12.00; 0-15-600252-3. These 26 essays offer a cogent commentary on the nascent democratic societies of Central Europe. From the opening essay to the last, we see how the initial euphoria at the end of Communist rule is tempered by the difficulties of reform. "When you live under a dictatorship, you imagine that even leaves will be a new color once the regime is overthrown," Konrád writes, and the social changes he depicts are by turns exhilarating and frightening. "New Year's Prediction for 1990" is a prayer for the future. He examines the fiction of collective identities in "Being Hungarian" and "What Makes a Hungarian"; in "Identity and Hysteria," a prescient early essay on the civil war in Yugoslavia, he writes of the consequences. "Eternally Waiting" posits the question "Can Jews survive in Central Europe?" "Hail and Farewell," written in 1994, is a wry look at Hungary's four-year-old electoral process. Konrád's novels include The Case Worker, The City Builder, The Loser, Antipolitics, and A Feast in the Garden.
Konrád	George	Hungarian	George Konrád. Stonedial [Kocra]. Tr. Ivan Sanders. New York. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book by Harcourt. 2000. 296 pp. Cloth: $24.00; ISBN 0-15-100619-9. In 1993 in post-Socialist Hungary, Janos Dragomán, a wandering scholar and world-famous writer, returns to his native town of Kandor to visit three old friends. They all have wives eager to be seduced by Dragomán, whose reputation precedes him. Through a series of flashbacks covering his intellectually and sexually precocious school days, his memories of the life of Jews in 1944, and the 1956 Revolution, we learn that Dragomán inadvertently caused the massacre of six young colleagues. Persecuted by the police and the townspeople, Dragomán meets his postmodern end. Other works by Konrád in translation are The Melancholy of Rebirth and Feast in the Garden, both published by Harvest/Harcourt.
Köpf	Gerhard	German	Gerhard Köpf. Innerfar and Bluff, or the Southern Cross. Tr. A. Leslie Willson. Camden House. 1997. 239 pp. Paper: $26.00; ISBN 1-57113-182-5. Innerfar, Köpf's first novel, celebrates by way of memory and storytelling the life and destiny of Karlina Piloti, an eccentric poet and friend of writers, who vanished into madness. Piloti is based on Ilse Schneider-Lengyel, the real-life hostess of the first meeting of the influential postwar German literary group, Gruppe 47. Innerfar thus supplies the reader with insight into the workings and nature of that enigmatic association of writers. But it is also a story of the ageless endurance of devotion beyond death. Bluff, or the Southern Cross is a simple story about liberation and the unshackling of the imagination, a story about friendship between the young and the old, about the importance of dreaming of far-away places, the exaggeration of reality, and how to rid oneself of torments. Among Willson's translations is Ulla Berkéwicz's novel Angels are Black and White.
Kourouma	Ahmadou	French	Ahmadou Kourouma. Monnew [Monnè, outrages et défis]. Tr. Nidra Poller. Mercury House [Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1990]. 1993. 254 pp. Cloth: $25.00; ISBN 1-56279-027-7. Paper: $13.95; ISBN 1-56279-058-7. Ahmadou Kourouma was born in 1927 on the Ivory Coast near the frontier with Guinea. His refusal to participate against the Houphouet-Boigny's independence movement marked the beginning of a fighting career in French Indochina. On his return to the Ivory Coast in 1963 he was forcefully driven out of his country on false charges of conspiracy. His strong resentment marked the publication of his first fictional work, Les Soleils des indépendances [The Suns of Independence]. Kourouma's second novel, Monnew, ascertains his position as one of the foremost contemporary writers of "French-language-African-literature." Kourouma captivates his readers with the tale of Djigui Keita, the king of the fictional land of Soba. Concerned with the devastating effects of colonialism, the novel is written mostly from the viewpoint of Djigui Keita. Keita attempts to combat the oncoming French troops with sorcery, sacrifices, and "tata"--mud walls around Soba. But the Europeans come anyway bringing with them an era of "monnew"--"the outrage, defiance, contempt, insult, humiliation..."--of French colonialism.
Kozameh	Alicia	Spanish	Alicia Kozameh. Steps Under Water [Pasos bajo el agua]. Tr. David E. Davis. University of California Press [Editorial Contrapunto, 1987]. 1996. 164 pp. Cloth: $35.00; ISBN 0-520-20387-9. Paper: $12.95; ISBN 0-520-20388-7. Steps Under Water is drawn fro mKozameh's experiences as a political prisoner in Argentina during the "Dirty War" of the 1970s. Kozameh creates a personal, often hallucinatory account of physical and psychological imprisonment─of memory, resistance, and survival.
Kramer	Theodore	German	Theodore Kramer. Love in London: Poems [based on Gesammelte Gedichte, 3 vols.]. Trs. Frederick Brainin and Jörg Thunecke. Ariadne Press [Europa Verlag, Vienna, 1984-1987]. 1995. 161 pp. Paper: ISBN 1-57241-009-4. Bilingual. Love in London contains a selection of the most representative of Kramer's poems written while he was in exile in England from 1939 to 1957. They reflect the changing moods of an exiled German-speaking writer in response to complex problems faced before, during, and after World War II and are excellent examples of Kramer's poetic diction. Contains such works as "Who Rings the Bell Outside," "O Loneliness, O Loneliness," "And Evening Time Crawls," "Black Country," "Brockwood Gardens," "What Do I Write You For," and "The Huyton Internees."
Krasznahorkai	Lázló	Hungarian	László Krasznahorkai. The Melancholy of Resistance [Az ellenállás melankóliája. Tr. George Szirtes. New York. New Directions. 2000 [1989; Quartet, London, 1998]. 320 pp. Cloth: $25.95; ISBN 0-8112-1450-8. In this surreal and darkly humorous novel, László Krasznahorkai describes the chaotic events surrounding the arrival of a circus in an insignificant town in Hungary. The circus promises to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world and its arrival is greeted with a frenzy of speculation. Bizarre rumors begin to spread that the circus has some sinister hidden agenda and as the expectant crowds gather, the town finds itself in the grip of hysteria. The Melancholy of Resistance was voted Best Book of the Year Award in Germany. Poet George Szirtes's translations have won the European Poetry Translation Prize and the Gold Star Award for the Republic of Hungary.
Krausser	Helmut	German	Helmut Krausser. The Great Bagarozy [Der Grosse Bagarozy]. Tr. Mike Mitchell. Sawtry, U.K. Dedalus. Subterranean. 1998 [Rowohit Verlag GmbH, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1997]. 153 pp. Paper: $12.99; ISBN 1-873982-04-6. Cora Dulz is a married psychiatrist in her mid-30s, with a husband who is only interested in cutting articles about unusual deaths out of the newspapers. Professionally, Cora's life has reached a state of crisis because two of her patients have recently committed suicide. Now she has a new patient, Stanislaus Nagy, a young man who is obsessed with the dead opera singer Maria Callas and claims she appears to him in visions. Contrary to professional etiquette, she meets him socially and falls in love with him, but Nagy refuses to have an affair with her. Claiming to be the Devil and to have inhabited Callas's black poodle, he disappears only to be found by Cora performing as a magician in a variety theatre under the name of The Great Bagarozy.
Kremer	Rüdiger	German	Rüdiger Kremer. The Color of the Snow [Das Moij und andere Geschichten um Jakob]. Tr. Breon Mitchell. New Directions [Rowohlt Verlag, 1990]. 1992. 117 pp. Cloth: $19.95; ISBN 0-8112-1200-9. Paper: $9.95; ISBN 0-8112-1208-4. This is an inventive first novel of narrative possibilities consisting of 21 different texts, all revolving around the enigmatic Jakob. Born in Germany during World War II, Jakob is a passive boy, seemingly retarded, who has a brilliant, often magical awareness of his surroundings. Posing good versus evil, city versus country, male versus female, this mesmerizing work is also a meditation on the art of writing--interweaving a film script, a radio play and a short essay into its masterful structure. By book's end we suspect that Jakob is the author of the novel we are reading and that he has committed a heinously gruesome "unsolved" murder. Translator Mitchell won the ATA German Literary translation prize for his translation of Martin Grzimek's Heartstop and the 1991 ALTA Outstanding Translation Award for Grzimek's Shadowlife.
Kristeva	Julia	French	Julia Kristeva. Possessions. Tr. Barbara Bray. Columbia University Press. 1998. 211 pp. Cloth: $27.50; ISBN 0-231-10998-9. In Possessions, Kristeva returns to the corrupt, colorful Eastern European seaside resort of Santa Varara, where the boundaries between East and West, civilization and barbarism, and good and evil are erased. Part mystery, part meditation, this tale is told by Parisian amateur detective and newspaper reporter Stephanie Delacour, drawn into the mystery of her friend's murder.
Krl_a	Miroslav	Croatian	Miroslav Krle_a. On the Edge of Reason [Na ruba pameti]. Tr. Zora Depolo. New Directions [Athenäum Verlag, 1938]. 1995. 192 pp. Paper: $10.95; ISBN 0-8112-1306-4. On the Edge of Reason is set in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, 1938. Public folly is represented by the official and professional world of "doctors, rectors, deans, lecturers, veterinary surgeons, gynaecologists, directors-general..." which the Yugoslav state had inherited from the Hapsburg Empire. The decline and fall of the narrator is the consequence of his almost accidental statement of the simple truth that the behavior of Director-General Domacinski in 1918, in shooting a number of peasants who had invaded his property, had been criminal and insane. In the events that follow, the narrator is almost passive while the conventional world assails him with its weapons of rumor and exaggeration, its provocative "friendly advice" and finally at the trial where prosecutor, judge, and public shout him down.
Kuhnau	Johann	German	Johann Kuhnau. The Musical Charlatan [Der musikalische Quacksalber]. Ed. James Hardin. Tr. John R. Russell. Camden House. 1997. 163 pp. Cloth: $49.95; ISBN 1-57113-142-6. This first English translation of a late Baroque German novel makes available a book that Romain Rolland early in this century singled out as one of the most interesting and amusing of the Baroque era. The novel paints in an unusually realistic style the checkered career of a musical charlatan, Caraffa, who believes that in order to be successful in the musical world in Germany, one must pretend to be an Italian. His tricks and ruses, which his German colleagues see through with little difficulty, provide some of the most memorable comic scenes in German literature. At the same time, the book provides an immensely informative and interesting picture of everyday life toward the end of the 17th century.
Kuroi	Senji	Japanese	Senji Kuroi. Life in the Cul-de-Sac [Gunsei]. Tr. Philip Gabriel. Berkeley. Stone Bridge Press. 2001 [Kodansha, 1984]. 232 pp. Paper: $12.95; ISBN 1-800-283-3572. Rock Spring Collection of Japanese Literature. The suburban is magically, mysteriously surreal in this collection of 12 interwoven tales about four, seemingly ordinary Japanese families living on a quiet Tokyo street. Set in the booming Japan of the 1980s, the work reveals the anxiety beneath the placid surface of modern domestic life, as these four families grapple with revelatory visions, uncomfortable marriages, and strange rumblings of the past and future. Their lives intertwine in a web of whispered speculation, shared secrets, and moments of poignant connection. Reminiscent of Raymond Carver's Short Cuts, Life in the Cul-de-Sac entertains and illumniates with black humor, wry compassion, and a delicate Japanese surrealism. Senji Juroi, one of Japan's leading novelists, was awarded the Tanizaki Prize for Literature in 1984 for Life in the Cul-de-Sac. Philip Gabriel's transltions have appeared in the New Yorker, ZYZZYVA, and the Columbia Anthology of Japanese Literature, and include Haruki Murakami's South of the Border, West of the Sun.
Kyong-Nim	Shin	Korean	Shin Kyong-Nim. Farmers' Dance: Poems by Shin Kyong-Nim [Nong-mu]. Tr. Brother Anthony of Taizé and Young-Moo Kim. DapGae Publishing and the Cornell University East Asia Program. 1999 [1973]. 175 pp. Paper: ISBN 1-885445-05-9. Cornell East Asia Series No. 105. Bilingual. Shin Kyong-Nim's fame as a poet dates mainly from the initial publication of this collection in 1973, which helped to open the way for public acceptance in Korea of a poetry rooted in harsh social realities, a militant literature that was to grow into the workers' poetry of the 1980s. Many of these poems are spoken by an undefined plural voice, a "we" encompassing the collective identity of what is sometimes called the Minjung—the poor people, farmers, laborers, and miners among whom the poet had lived. Shin is one of the first non-intellectual poets in modern Korea and the awareness that he knows the bitterness he is evoking from the inside gives his poems added power. In their Introduction, the translators explain that because words for such things as musical instruments, food and drink, houses, customs, the landscape, etc., have no equivalent in the English language, they have retained the original Korean terms and added brief definitions. "The words are not mere isolated translation problems; they are expressions of the culture in which they are used. Korean culture has no exact parallels elsewhere, it should not be confused with the cultures of China or Japan."