Three Streets - Yoko Tawada, New Directions Publishing Corporation

The always astonishing Yoko Tawada here takes a walk on the supernatural side of the street. In &quot,Kollwitzstrasse,&quot, as the narrator muses on former East Berlin's new bourgeois health food stores, so popular with wealthy young people, a ghost boy begs her to buy him the old-fashioned sweets he craves. She worries that sugar's still sugar-but why lecture him, since he's already dead? Then white feathers fall from her head and she seems to be turning into a crane .. . Pure white kittens and a great Russian poet haunt &quot,Majakowskiring&quot,: the narrator who reveres Mayakovsky's work is delighted to meet his ghost.And finally, in &quot,Pushkin Allee,&quot, a huge Soviet-era memorial of soldiers comes to life-and, &quot,for a scene of carnage everything was awfully well-ordered.&quot, Each of these stories opens up into new dimensions the work of this magisterial writer.