Books

Book critic John Leonard reviews "Absence," a new novel by Austrian writer Peter Handke.

Biographer Deirdre Bair. Her latest book is a biography of French writer, intellectual and feminist Simone De Beauvoir. Bair has also written a biography of Samuel Beckett.

Israeli journalist Ehud Ya'ari (A-hood yah-HAR-ee). He's the co-author of "Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising-Israel's Third Front." The book chronicles the events leading up to the Palestinian uprising, and it examines how the Israeli government misread, and misreported, the events surrounding the Intifada. Ehud Ya'ari covers Middle East affairs for Israeli television.

Writer and critic Nelson George. George is one of this county's most prominent chroniclers of black music. He's the black music editor at Billboard, is a columnist for Playboy, and regularly writes for the Village Voice and Essence. George was the editor of a new book called, "Stop the Violence," a collaboration of today's top rappers working to end black on black violence. George's earlier books include a history of Motown called "Where Did Our Love Go?" and "The Death of Rhythm and Blues."

Book critic John Leonard reviews "The Quest for El Cid," by Richard Fletcher.

Photographer Jan Staller. His photographs capture the well-traveled outskirts of cities. His subjects are viaducts, tunnels, piers, and subway entrances - the places we pass on the way to somewhere else. He's just published a new collection of such photographs taken around New York over the past ten years, "Frontier New York" published by Hudson Hills Press. In the book's introduction Paul Goldberger writes, "To look at New York through Staller's photographs is to feel that the familiar city has become somehow mystical, ephemeral, almost haunted."

Book critic John Leonard reviews Deirdre Bair's new biography of Simone de Beauvoir.

Actor, comedian, filmmaker, and author Michael Palin. In the fall of 1988, Palin set out to recreate the journey Jules Verne described in "Around the World in 80 Days." Palin circled the globe by using just about every means of transportation except airplane (since that wasn't available in Verne's time). Palin turned his journey into an 8-part TV BBC series (it aired in this country on the A&E network) and a book that's a bestseller in England.

Reporter Lawrence Weschler. Weschler is a staff writer for the "New Yorker," where he writes on human rights, political, and cultural issues. Weschler's new book, "A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers," (published by Pantheon) looks at how victims of torture in Brazil and Uruguay worked to bring their captors activities to light (portions of the book ran as a five-part series in the New Yorker). Weschler's earlier books include "The Passion of Poland," and "Shapinsky's Karma."

Book critic John Leonard reviews "Solomon Gursky Was Here," the new novel by Canadian writer Mordecai Richler. Richler's also the author of "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" and "Joshua Then and Now."