THE CAF¸ OF MIRRORS
By
In this claustrophobically intense novel (pub. 1983) by a prize-winning Italian writer, a Yugoslavian woman, Katharina Pollaczek, returns to the seaport border city where she was born to seek custody of her young son. She stumbles onto a murder, and is otherwise traumatized and transformed by her immersion in an embattled culture whose political and social divisions ""mirror,"" as it were, her own fragmented psyche. A potent portrayal of rootlessness, in which sensory detail, supporting imagery, and strong characterization are expertly braided together.