FICTION

A MASS FOR ARRAS by Andrzej Szczypiorski, translated from the Polish by Richard Lourie (Grove: $18.95; 188 pp.) This is a short book; concise, gruff, explosive, extraordinary. A book to be consumed in a gulp. Then to be reread slowly, set down often to reflect on the latest truth revealed. And to be taken up again to find that the truth is sophistry; it is the perceived lie that is manifestly irrefutable. Only to reconsider a few searing pages later. . . . This is a free-swinging intellectual indictment of fascism, of the totalitarianism called “communism,� of sham socialism, of dilettante democracy, of religion that enslaves while it purports to save. A plague on all their houses.

And a plague it is that sets it all aflame. For his intensely stylized battleground, Andrzej Szczypiorski, Polish author of the applauded “The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman� and winner of the PEN Award for “Mass,� has chosen the medieval town of Arras in the province of Artois. Historically, Arras was ravaged in 1458 by the Black Death. No one was allowed in or out. So maddening was the hunger that parents ate their children. Three years later, Arras, recovered, was visited by a second seizure, this one even more noxious as man set upon man in a fit of self-righteous rage.

Szczypiorski’s Arras is guided--ruled--by humble, ultra-pious Father Albert, who has his own agenda, based on the Word. His spiritual and political rival is David, bastard Bishop of Utrecht, a member of the nobility who is profane, hedonistic, rational, agnostic and ultimately the far kinder man. The battle for souls is at once sublime and subversive, revolving about how many pinheads can dance on an angel.Believe or disbelieve--and you will do both--you will surely conclude that there is a wizard among us.