UNDER HOUSE ARREST

Thirteen loosely linked autobiographical Under House Arrest ($13.99 paperback original; Mar.; 208 pp.; 1-85242-355-2): Thirteen loosely linked autobiographical stories by dissident Russian writer Kharitonov (1941—81), whose homosexuality added a plaintive further dimension to these wry cameos detailing his experiences of urban poverty, censorship, and officially approved discrimination. Aphorisms, fragments of verse, and excerpts from never-to-be-completed works in progress jostle together, both confusingly and energetically, in such metafictional narratives as the long, occasionally maudlin “Tears for One strangled and Dead” and the forthright “How I Found Out: One Boy’s Story,” an anatomy, so to speak, of the pleasures of cruising. Kharitonov’s was an emotional, often grating, inchoate voice only beginning to find its range—but there was life in it, and it remains very much worth hearing.