FOR NELSON MANDELA

South African resistance leader Mandela, jailed since 1964, is the focal point for this collection of mostly original essays, stories, and poems by 23 literary luminaries. A French edition appeared in 1985; included here is that text (featuring many French authors--Severo Sarduy, Edmont JabÉs, and Maurice Blanchot among them--and others, including Nadine Gordimer and Susan Sontag), as well as additional entries, mostly by Americans. William S. Burroughs offers a cut-and-paste parable, Allen Ginsberg a potent poem about political action and martyrdom; John Irving recycles a touching hometown memoir, Joyce Carol Oates writes of ""Desire,"" and non-Yankee Samuel Beckett delivers a Beckettian ditty (""Go end there/One fine day/Where never till then/Till as much as to say/No matter where/No matter when""). Not consistently top-flight, but this one's from the heart.