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Juan Benet. Columbia University Press, $26 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-231-05457-7

During a mysterious, menacing encounter in rural Spain, a man and woman who were lovers 25 years earlier at the end of the Civil War offer monologues on the fragmentation, violence and alienation of modern Spanish life. PW found this novel ""harsh, vaguely perverse, obsessed with time and memory.'' (May)

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