This superb collection showcases 14 talented Argentinianok with Argentine in subtitle?/ok/pk writers. An artist who has abandoned her work in Silvina Ocampo's ``The Drawing Lesson'' is brought face-to-face with her younger self: a girl with a pinafore, hair ribbon and infinite artistic promise. In ``A Memory of Punkal,'' Angel Bonomini describes an even eerier confrontation, as a man wandering the streets of a deserted city examines a pile of corpses and recognizes one--his own. A writer who despises the abasement of modern fiction agrees to judge a ``Short Story Contest'' on the theme of supermarkets; Marcos Aguinis's hilarious tale shows the hapless judge swamped with such literary jewels as ``Jesus Goes Shopping'' and ``Yoghurtssp correct/pk of Death.'' In Adolfo Bioy-Casares's ``The Windowless Room,'' a tourist killing time in Berlin follows a mysterious stranger to what the stranger maintains is the edge of the universe: an empty, nondescript room in a building that resembles an M. C. Escher drawing. Some of the stories, which were written or published in the 1980s, have previously appearedok?or appeared previously?pk in the U.S. British-based di Giovanni is a veteran translator of Jorge Luis Borges. ( June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Editor Di Giovanni has selected Argentine fiction from the 1980s to illustrate the importance and diversity of the short narrative in that country's literature. Blending well-known authors with those writers who are making their first appearance in English translation, this collection exemplifies both the Argentine love of the short story form and the varieties of national style that these writers have adopted. The subjects, too, range across the board, from autobiographical reminiscences to sociopolitical commentary as each story forms a piece in a mosaic of contemporary Argentine life and culture. A useful companion to Zapata's recent Short Stories by Latin American Women [BKL Je 1 90]. --John ~Brosnahan