A World Quite Round: Two Stories and Novella

The title of the three novellas gathered here is drawn from a poem by Wallace Stevens that addresses Weaver's guiding theme: that language delineates our world. The first story, ""Ah Art, Ah Life,'' focuses on the innocent perceptivity of a 10-year-old child in the face of his parents' divorce and an aunt to whom he is sent for refuge who herself is struggling to find solace and love in the fleeting world. The central, and at times outrageous and funny novella, ``The Interpreter,'' is set in an inhumane prisoner-of-war camp in North Korea, where a Chinese ``prohibitionary graduate of the People's Institute for the Study of Alien Languages'' discovers the limitations of language in his attempts to resolve the conflict of two American inmates, an Oklahoma redneck and a black from the streets of Detroit. Weaver has a convincing and captivating style. (May)