14 FEBRUARY 1998, page 31

Running Out Of Breath

James Simmons HEADED FOR THE BLUES by Josef Skvorecky Faber, £9.99, pp. 280 T his is a memoir plus ten stories writ- ten in English by the author who now lives in Toronto. I......

Poles Together And Apart

Andro Linklater SHTETL by Eva Hoffman Secker, £16.99, pp. 269 L aziness can kill. When a peasant in the market-place of Bransk, a small town in Poland 100 miles from the Russian......