Blood Fugue, Shirley Eskapa (Academy Chicago: $4.95)....

Blood Fugue, Shirley Eskapa (Academy Chicago: $4.95). In 1984, Shirley Eskapa ventured into nonfiction with “Woman Versus Woman,” which pits husband against wife against other woman, arguing that any marriage is vulnerable to attack from the outside, regardless of the quality of the attachment. Defined in this way, a “blood fugue” knows no borders, an important thought to keep in mind when reading this politically charged novel, for, otherwise, one is tempted to blame the protagonists’ personal tragedies solely on attitudes of the state, letting setting become subject. That setting is South Africa, Shirley Eskapa’s native country. Specifically, it is a college campus, where Ceza Steele, rich, spoiled and bored, stumbles into a political protest and soon develops an erotic attraction to Indra, an East Indian and one of the protest’s leaders. His touch, his voice and “the space between his words” seduce her, but by mid-novel, she still hasn’t considered the consequences of their involvement together. That realization comes instead after Sarah, the mother of Ceza’s former boyfriend, reveals their trysting place in a letter to the “immorality squad.” One does get the impression that fate has stacked the deck against Sarah and Indra, but, as Eskapa sees it, the blame lies with the protagonists, for political divisions spring largely from selfishness: When Ceza flees the country after Sarah’s letter, for instance, Indra is arrested: “That white liberal,” he says to the officer. “That passionate Jewish liberal.” “You’re all the same, you people,” responds the officer. “Savage to begin with, extra savage when betrayed.”

The Nazi Years: A Documentary History, edited by Joachim Remak (Simon & Schuster: $6.95). Literature recounting Holocaust horrors is more abundant than literature about Holocaust causes. Yet, without the latter, we cannot direct our indignation toward a practical goal, such as trying to prevent future holocausts by avoiding past mistakes. In the author’s view, the trends that “converged to create National Socialism” ranged from anti-Liberalism to anti-Marxism and anti-rationalism. Anti-rationalism emerges most definitively in the letters, speeches, commentaries and advertisements collected here, for then (as today), most political decisions were prompted by emotions rather than intellect. As a young Nazi explains in a post-war autobiography excerpted by the editor, “Our hearts compelled us to think, Hitler, you’re our man.” Appeals forwarded in billboards of the time can only be called idiotic: “Are you blond? Are you a man? If so, read the Ostara library of those who are blond and support masculine rights.” Rallying cries, moreover, were rife with inherent contradictions: “What do we National Socialists want for ourselves? Nothing! . . . What is the National Socialist password to freedom? God helps those who help themselves!!!” The commentary by Joachim Remak, a professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, is informative but understated--he apparently assumes that readers will realize the documents’ absurdity on their own. History, however, has suggested this isn’t always the case.

The Discovery of Being, Rollo May (Norton: $5.95). His writing is more accessible than Freud’s, and the fears he addresses (annihilation by nuclear war, dehumanization by technology) are more contemporary, but Rollo May’s ideas are as foreign to many American psychotherapists as Eastern medicine is to Western doctors. Our reluctance to embrace Existentialism as rejuvenating is not entirely surprising, however, for while May’s basic idea seems simple--personalize therapy according to patients’ needs, he exhorts, so they can discover their own, unique “pattern of potentialities”--it in effect leaves therapists without a specific plan of action. Methodologies, in May’s eyes, disrupt the individual’s “pattern,” leading to “nonbeing,” the basis of modern anxiety. May encountered the specter of “nonbeing” in a literal sense while battling a near-fatal case of tuberculosis. His broader definition of “nonbeing” as the death of individual ideas and feelings will appeal primarily to those who agree with his view that technology can stifle the human spirit.

A Descant for Gossips, Thea Astley (University of Queensland Press, 250 Commercial St., Manchester, N.H. 03101: $8.95). As the jacket cover says and the title intimates, “rumour and malice . . . in a narrow-minded country town” threaten this novel’s three protagonists--Robert and Helen, schoolteachers, and Vinny, a shy, homely student. The author would have us believe that only the characters’ honesty, tolerance and desire to understand shield them against a harsh social reality. These characters, however, fail to confront reality; they are defeated by their own timidity. Vinny, always the outsider, is so frightened by her own feelings that she fails to come to terms with them--after seeing a female classmate swim naked with three boys, for instance, she simply becomes “shocked” and wriggles back into nearby shrubbery, dismissing any further thought about the affair. Similarly, Helen and Robert seem unable to consummate their intimacy, though they seldom discuss their reluctance. They dismiss each other’s aloofness much as they dismiss the “vulgarity” of their students or “the heartiness and salacity” of the kids loafing outdoors. However much the unnecessary alienation may try our patience, though, it is sensitively portrayed and delicately depicted, especially when it relates to Vinny, who “was afraid, as she clung to the spinning edges of her world, that one day she would be flung unwanted and violently into space.”

The Progressive Movement: 1900-1915, edited by Richard Hofstadter (Simon & Schuster: $6.95). No sooner did America regain unity after the Civil War than a new rift began to emerge, this one prompted not by whites exploiting blacks but by industrialism exploiting whites and blacks. The Progressive Movement achieved few policy changes at the federal level, but it remains significant today because it paved the way for the welfare state and emphasized the need for at least some government intervention in the marketplace. To the credit of Richard Hofstadter, this book’s main emphasis is not on the relatively well-known muckrakers of the period, but on the leaders who issued more timeless messages about political responsibility (Woodrow Wilson’s concern that “individuality is being swallowed up” by giant organizations) and political agendas (“The Socialists point out the connection between industrial maladjustment and individual wrongdoing,” said Jane Addams, a sociologist, “but certainly . . . the obligation to eradicate vice cannot belong to one political party”).

NOTEWORTHY: Early Jazz: Roots and Musical Development, Gunther Schuller (Oxford: $8.95). A highly-acclaimed ethnomusicology looking at pioneers from Louis Armstrong to Jelly Roll Morton and at their efforts to create a new musical form out of African formal and sonoric elements and European rhythmic and harmonic practices. The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes (Harper and Row: $5.95), spins a tale around the fate of journalist Ambrose Bierce, who vanished in Mexico in 1914. A story of injustice, betrayal, conceit and machismo positing that the old gringo’s last adventure was deliberate suicide. Party Games: The Classic Bestseller From the 1950s, Bernard S. Mason, Elmer D. Mitchell (Harper & Row: $5.95). Often ridiculously outdated (“Girls, skip around your partner three times and . . . tell him about your views on women’s ability to drive a car”) and from 1935, not from “the 1950s,” the book details games that reveal a bygone era.