I, literary tropes and lyricism. Unfor 1 tunately, the monograph contains j many minor errors in spelling, word 1 omissions, and verbs linked to inap i propriate prepositions (forexample, 1 "I arrived to a novel conclusion"; I "a few month months"; "That's is j where I stand"; "she does not want ' me tomeet with anyone whose have , been released fromprison"). Though 1 small, these discrepancies interrupt I theflow of the text. Yet thework has 1 a cumulative power, Reading it,one i experiences the bleak arc of recent Albanian history, from World War II i and itsaftermaththroughtheStalinist , and Maoist periods. 1 The early stories,setduring and I just after World War II, foreground 1 the suffering,idealism, and heroism i of theAlbanian people. In "Weeping ! Pines," anti-Communists capture and ? torture Marion, who signs a state , ment against his comrades-in-arms ? but escapes and joyfully returns to , his unit. Sentenced todie forhis per 1 fidy, he accepts his comrades' ver i diet, asking only thathe be allowed 1 "to embrace you one by one, and to I part as friends,"The protagonist of ! "The Ambulance Driver" finds an ingenious way to repair his vehicle , and save a dying pregnant woman. 1 Forced to shoot dissidents in "Target I Practice," the innocent Berti slowly 1 unravels and later commits suicide in I a psychiatrichospital. ! The later stories document how J theparty tyrannized itscitizens, suf , focating their lives. A docker who 1 rushes his work toget to awedding I breaks a heavy crate from theSoviet 1 Union full of handcuffs to bind the I wrists of "trouble-makers" like him. 1 A kulak's peer-reported complaint i about the lack of olive oil earns him , ten years in prison. The ironic nar i rator of "Made in Albania" suggests , that "acclamations, ovations, frenzied 1 hand-clapping, and especially rhyth mic applause" be exported as "a pre cious product created by the social ist system!" Several stories feature bureaucrats who spy and are spied on, highlighting a rigid but arbitrary system thatflourishes when everyone becomes an "eye." In the aptly titlednovella, "The Skull Crusher," a young investiga tor,Fation, dreams of rising in the Sigurimi (secretpolice) and so recoils from his uncle Pleur?t, a former anti fascistfighter,towhom "the Sigurimi machine resembles the grindstone that eats away even as it consumes its own substance"?hence themono graph's title. For Pleur?t,Albania has become a "tromokratia," wherein "the power of horror has displaced 'democracy/ ... It ismadness molded into a system." Fation, who formally witnessed the execution and literal skull-crushing of a once-important official, ends discredited, displaced, and driven to madness and a psychi atric hospital by the very group for whose approval he sacrificedhis soul, his skullmetaphorically crushed. Immersed in this numbing fic tional representation of Albania as "traumocracy," where all must choose either to "enforce the law," therebysurrendering theirhumanity, or toriskprison or the inevitablepsy chiatrichospital, one feelsone's own soul ground. Mich?le Levy NorthCarolinaA&T University Tiphanie Yanique. How to Escape froma Leper Colony; ? Novella and Stories. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Gray wolf. 2010. 184 pages. $15. isbn978-1 55597-550-0 InTiphanie Yanique's new collection of short stories, an engineer builds a giant bridge thatlinks theCaribbean islands. Joyous celebration gives rise to sorrow as the bridge coaxes TIPHANIE YANIQUE out the strained relationships that people have hidden beneath thevast expanses of water?a lover commits suicide, a wife leaves her doting husband?and the bridge, too, soon collapses from shoddy construction. "The Bridge Stories" encap sulate Yanique's project: to give voice to those separated by gulfs of class, language, and land. Her work is audacious in that every one is fairgame: she writes about blacks,whites, people of mixed race, Americans, Dominicans, Cruzans, Gambians, Indians, Brits, poor, and rich.But her audacity brings reward, because she does so with sincer ity.You feel as moved by a depres sive coffin-makeras you do by two upper-class matrons who jostle for domination of the island ofSt. Johns, or a young Ghanaian soccer star whose dreams of Premier League football evaporate in a canoe. Tiphanie Yanique hails from theU.S. Virgin Island of St. Thom as...