Walk in My World: International Short Stories about Youth

Representing one of Mazer's (Working Days: Stories About Teenagers and Work) most ambitious editorial achievements, this anthology--which includes the works of three Nobel Prize winners (Heinrich Boll, Yasunari Kawabata and Naguib Mahfouz)--offers 16 modern short stories from around the world, high in literary merit and accessible to teens. The common theme of youth on the brink of losing their innocence takes a variety of forms in these selections: from the Haiku-like simplicity of Kawabata's ""The Jay,"" in which a mother jay separated from her baby is a metaphor for a young woman's estrangement from her father; to Boll's judicious use of repetition in ""The Balek Scales"" to convey the weight of political tyranny in a small German town; to words unspoken in the terse dialogue between members of a Chilean family as the streets of Santiago fill with soldiers in Skarmeta's ""The Composition."" Frank O'Connor writes of a poor Irish boy who has a rude awakening on Christmas morning; an Indonesian servant is forced into marriage at the tender age of eight in Toer's ""Inem."" The more universal aches of adolescence come through in other stories: falling in love for the first time--vividly evoked in Toni Cade Bambara's ""Sweet Town""--and accepting unwelcome and unexpected change as does V.S. Pritchett's narrator when she returns from boarding school to find that her father's secretary has taken her mother's place in ""The Ladder."" Mazer invites readers to examine and ponder pearls of wisdom collected from the intimate corners of five continents--and they will likely want to embark on future expeditions with the writers they discover here. Ages 12-up. (Dec.)