CHRISTMAS IN SCANDINAVIA

Christmas In Scandinavia ($25.00 until Dec. 31, 1996; $30.00 thereafter; Sept. 1996; 280 pp.; 0-8032-3907-6): This marvelous anthology collects 17 splendid tales by 19th- and 20th-century writers from the Scandinavian countries, Faroe Islands, and Finland. Nobel Prize winners Johannes V. Jensen and Selma Lagerlîf are represented, he by the bitterly ironic ``Christmas Peace,'' she by the inexplicably neglected ``Legend of the Christmas Roses,'' a limpidly written allegory worthy of Hawthorne. Other exceptional pieces include Hans Christian Andersen's moving fairy tale ``The Fir Tree'' (the only story here at all likely to be familiar to US readers), a powerful criticism of anti-Semitism in ``Advent in the Thirties'' by Eyvind Johnson (another Nobel laureate), and especially the Faroese William Heinesen's ``Born of a Maid,'' an unforgettable retelling of the birth of Christ, set in the North Atlantic during a hurricane. An indispensable collection and one of the most delightful fictional surprises of the year.