The Law of White Spaces

These five haunting, beautifully written stories, set in an unnamed Hungarian city, deal with doctors and patients in extreme situations. In ``Vera,'' a disturbing tale of obsession, an American physician doing relief work in post-WW II Hungary develops a morbid, semi-erotic attachment to a epileptic, mute 16-year-old girl. Determined to break her silence by any means, he yields to violent impulses, destroying his marriage and career. The title story profiles a doctor who swings between denial and terror at his worsening amnesia. In ``Clock of Life'' a desperately lonely septuagenarian whose amnesiac husband is half-mad from brain disease makes sexual advances to her physican, whom she had known when he was a boy. ``Bahdy's Disease'' depicts doctors' ignorance and illness as symptoms of spiritual imbalance. In ``Choices'' an elderly widow decides to go on living rather than join her just-deceased husband in death or their son in Canada. Pressburger, a Hungarian-born film director who lives in Italy, provides a fascinating and often frightening look at the human condition in these elegantly translated tales. (Feb.)