THE EAGLE AND THE CROW

The Eagle And The Crow ($14.99 paperback original; Apr. 1997; 226 pp.; 1-85242-356-0): A fine anthology of 20 stories by 16 Polish writers (``dating from the period just before the Second World War to the 1990s'') variously concerned with their country's experience of military rule and foreign occupation and its people's consolatory resort to escapism and fantasy. There are several classic works here—from such established eminences as Witold Gombrowicz, Aleksandr Wat, and Stanislaw Lem, and including two vivid excerpts from Bruno Schulz's autobiographical ``novel'' The Street of Crocodiles, Sl†womir Mrozek's justly celebrated political fable ``The Elephant,'' and Tadeusz Borowski's harrowing Holocaust tale, ``This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.'' More recent stories by less familiar writers (e.g., Janusz Anderman, Hanna Krall), deeply committed to sociopolitical themes, add welcome variety to a truly representative and consistently interesting collection.