THE STORY TODAY 1966/1967: Nine Stories from Nine Countries

This is the first in a projected annual series in which nine publishers have chosen what they consider to be the best story to have appeared in their country during the past year. From England--Patrick Boyle's Meles Vulgaris, the common badger whose tenacity is matched by an insistently seductive wife; Goffredo Pariso projects the takeover of an Italian village in The Americans in a monochromatic fashion; there's the terminal excerpt of Alexander Kluge's Attendance List for a Funeral; Swedish Sandro Key-Aberg's quiet, desolate The End of Man; Paavo Haavikko's (Finland) Before History Began, an austere allusive fable of political power and human responsibility; and others--including a marvelous, funny, sad story by Isaac Bashevis Singer--The Seance--which deals with the end game of life. Without being chauvinistic, it's the best in the volume which represents a high level of quality and relevance: with the exception of the Kluge, there's not one that can be faulted for Operatic obscurantism.