TALES OF THE NIGHT

The topics of science, cultures, literature and mathematics meet unforgettable characters and strange, symbolic plots. A beautiful, young physicist rejects the possibility of love, but finds it nonetheless. A judge whose whole life has been regulated by the law runs off with the young man he has just convicted. On the night of March 19, 1929, love demands a reckoning from the characters we meet in these eight stories, for on that night all the illusions, shams and shibboleths by which they have lived are brought to light. British reader Stuart Langton slices through the text with icy clarity and precision, voicing each character enough to characterize but not caricature. Hoeg's classic style, in the tradition of Henry James, and his gothic imagination, in the tradition of Isak Dinesen, are best rendered without flamboyance, however. There is already plenty in the tales themselves. P.E.F. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 00]