And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran, translated...

And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran, translated by Elizabeth R. Cameron (Parabola). “(Jacques) Lusseyran was a remarkably gifted man with the soul of a poet and a profound capacity for love, faith and courage. . . . His description of what it is like to ‘see’ as a blind man is fascinating and inspiring; his account of Buchenwald . . . is one of the most anguishing fragments of Holocaust testimony that I have ever encountered” (Jonathan Kirsch).

The European Tribe, Caryl Phillips (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). “Novelist Caryl Phillips’ brief, eye-opening book . . . is one black man’s answer to Tocqueville’s classic, and may well become a classic of cultural exploration itself. . . . (It) is too important a book to be ignored” (Charles R. Johnson).

Significant Others, Armistead Maupin (Harper & Row). “(Armistead) Maupin isn’t trying for Swift, or even Waugh; he’s after affectionate fun-poking, not black comedy; skillful soap-opera farcist that he is, he knows that the deftest of souffles will flatten from too much of reality’s acid” (Harry Baldwin).