DEEP BLUE ALMOST BLACK

Deep Blue Almost Black ($22.95; May 1997; 130 pp.; 0-8101-1490-9): Twelve stories, written between 1960 and 1991, by a skillful Greek writer who at his best offers vivid elliptical glimpses of his country's modern experiences of natural catastrophe, foreign invasion, and homegrown military dictatorship. The devaluation of contemporary culture and the need to contrive imaginative entry into the consolations of the past and tradition are subtly explored in such delicately symbolic tales as ``There Still Is a God'' and ``You Will Find My Bones Under Rain.'' And the title novella, which brilliantly portrays an aging woman's barely contained fury at the changes time is working on her body and mind, expresses in striking microcosmic form Valtinos's compact and coherent vision of a world destroyed by the inexorable necessity of change.