BOOKS
495
figures, Schapiro comments that in both, "we seem to behold only a
small part of an infinitely extended structure; the pattern of the rest is
not deducible from the fragmentary sample which is an odd and in some
respects ambiguous segment and yet possesses a striking balance and co–
herence. In this construction one can see not only the artist's ideal of
order and scrupulous precision, but also a model of one aspect of con–
temporary thought: the conception of the world as law-bound in the
relation of simple elementary components, yet open, unbounded and
contingent as a whole." That last phrase might summarize Schapiro's
conception of the nature of art itself
KAREN WILKIN
Unsentimental Journeys
IMPERIUM. By Ryszard Kapuscinski . Translated from the Polish
by
Klara
Glowczewska. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.00.
THE IMPOSSIBLE COUNTRY: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE LAST
DAYS OF YUGOSLAVIA. By Brian Hall. David
R..
Godine. $23.95.
BIOGRAFI: A TRAVELER'S TALE. By Lloyd Jones. A Harvest Original!
Harcourt Brace . $10.95.
Macabre odysseys through three countries for which the term
"dysfunctional" might have been invented illuminate the Dantesque
shades still lingering where paradise was promised but dystopia was deliv–
ered.
Of all the locales the Iron Curtain kept hidden, Albania is perhaps
the one over which the harshest shadow of obscurity looms, a country
recognized, if at all, for its tradition of centuries-long blood feuds and
for having endured Europe's most repressive and paranoid Stalinist
regime. For decades, lawyers, Western business practices, religion, foreign
travel, and beards were forbidden, and after 1972, listening
to
foreign ra–
dio or television became a capital offense. A news blackout in both di–
rections, coupled with a travel ban and rigid ideological controls over
all
realms of culture, further isolated this small, impoverished country. As
the New Zealand novelist Lloyd Jones recounts it in
Biografi,
he first be–
came intrigued by distant Albania through an uncle's neighbor who re–
ceived the Voice of Tirana on his shortwave radio. After reading about a
popular revolt in Albania and the March 1991 exodus of 20,000 Albanians
