This study examines, analyzes and traces the history of the "balance of power, " and its effect on historical events. In this highly acclaimed and entertaining book, already "among the touchstones of the new travel writing" (Newsweek), one of West Germany's leading authors takes us on an insider's tour of Europe in the recent past. Focusing on Italy, Poland, Hungary, Swe Anne Fadiman is--by her own admission--the sort of person who learned about sex from her father's copy of Fanny Hill, whose husband buys her 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate's 1974 Toyota Corol From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well |