Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript
Moment Of Freedom ($15.95 paperback original; May 17; 218 pp.; 0-8023-1328-0): A new translation of the 1966 novel that begins Norwegian master Bjrneboes celebrated History of Bestiality trilogy. That highly charged phrase is also the title of the 12-volume anatomy of human depravity compiled by its protagonist, a morose court clerk whose saturnine psyche essentially resembles that of Dostoevskys misanthropic Underground Man. But this novel, like Dostoevskys, is much more than simple rant, for Bjrneboe skillfully juxtaposes jeremiads leveled at global iniquities (Nazism, the bombing of Hiroshima) with his narrators memories of encounters with vividly depicted and variously flawed other people, as well as of his own failings and hypocrisies. The result is harshly comic and richly disturbing fictionand one eagerly awaits the forthcoming later volumes of the trilogy.  --Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.