FROM THREE WORLDS
New Ukrainian Writing
edited by Ed Hogan
From Three Worlds: $21.00, paper $12.95; Nov. 1996; 288 pp.; 0- 939010-53-4, paper 0-939010-52-6): A vigorous collection of prose and poetry showcasing the work of 15 of the former Russian republic's best contemporary writers. The most arresting of the poets represented here is Oksana Zabuzhko, whose forthright eroticism and sardonic feminist voice fully justify her reputation as ``the Ukrainian Sylvia Plath.'' The short stories and novel excerpts, which deal in almost equal proportions with the vagaries of village life and the traumas inflicted by military occupation and combat, include memorable fiction by Yuri Andrukhovych (perhaps his country's best-known novelist), Valery Shevchuk, Yuri Vynnychuk's engaging chronicle of embattled adolescence (``Max and Me''), and Yevhen Pashkovsky's superb ``Five Loaves and Two Fishes,'' which unforgettably portrays an old peasant woman who finds in religion, not peace or strength, but haunting memories of the ``terror'' she and her culture have endured and, to a degree, survived.