Books: A WEEK IN BOOKS: A Continental breeze for the windmills of your mind.(Features) From: The Independent (London, England) | Date: March 9, 2002| Author: | COPYRIGHT 2002 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

LITERARY GENIUS is always with us. At least, one likes to think so, though the context of what we read, if not the books themselves, has utterly changed in the past 25 years. Our cultural environment has become news-saturated. The throughput of news (or, more precisely, our culture treated as news) is overwhelming, and the literary agenda, directed by anniversaries and engineered publication "events", reads much like the day's headlines.

But there are exceptions. This newspaper's generous embrace of translated fiction is one, of course. And should I be reproaching the ...