"Et voilà. Des perdreaux." They always appear close to dusk, the fledgling partridges, and always in pairs, nervy, intense, small high-speed feathered propellers, flying low over the wheat fields and into the black trees where death waits: hawks, hunters' guns, owls. She watches the pearled blur of wings and the birds seem to her unbearably vulnerable. "Venez, venez, mes petits," he murmurs, excited. He points the camera like a gun. A high thrumming rises from him, and she turns away, disturbed. The fledglings vanish between the trees. Panic, unaccountable, swoops down on her. She begins to run through the wheat toward St. Sulpice.

          Janette Turner Hospital

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The Literary Review: An International Journal of Contemporary Writing has been published quarterly by Fairleigh Dickinson University since 1957. Its many special issues have introduced new fiction, poetry, and essays from many nations, regions, or languages to English readers. Issues focus on such topics as contemporary fiction in Portugese, Iranian exiles, new Irish writing, North African authors, and Philippine fiction and poetry. Works from issues devoted to writing in English have won awards and been reprinted in many collections.

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