SEVEN GOTHIC TALES

Here's a find for the jaded palate — and for anyone interested in semi-modern, semi-romantic Arabian Nights Tales. The mantle of Andersen has fallen on a compatriot (one guesses the author to be a Dane), and there must be some heritage from Chaucer in his make-up somewhere. There are stories within stories within stories, told in a strangely haunting beauty of tongue, with the gift of a born story teller. Difficult to lay a finger on their charm — the fascination lies not in she stories themselves, though it is there too, but in the telling. Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Zanzibar — backgrounds verging on the realm of fantasy.