Strange traffic

The stories of Irene Dische deal in the emotional contraband people inadvertently smuggle - guilt, love, loyalty, deceit, disappointment: A staid and affluent American Jew returns to Germany to claim an ambiguous patrimony. A homosexual restaurateur gets the chance to cook another meal for his first lover. Ghosts haunt the New York apartment of a retired Viennese scientist whose past has been obscured by time and self-delusion. With biting humor, Dische recounts the small tragedies of people condemned by the vagaries of modern existence to a restless mobility: the Polish maid in Berlin; the Irish nanny in New York; the American hippie in Tripoli; the East German defector born in Mongolia, bred in Shanghai, and with mistresses and bank accounts in three countries. Defectors, tourists, refugees - wishful travelers all - expect freedom and change to lift their spirits, only to stumble under the weight of nostalgia. But what they miss are not the predictable objects of consolation - the gold wedding ring, the fading love letter, the home left behind - but their lifelong habits of paranoia. Dische's prose is as highly and strangely flavored as the lives and circumstances she describes.