In her novel "Life Class," Pat Barker introduced her readers to a group of students at the Slade School in London, where they studied art with professor Henry Tonks. Elinor Brooke and Kit Neville came from the upper-middle class. Elinor's family lives in the country; Kit is a Londoner. Paul Tarrant was a working-class boy.
In his novel, Farewell, Shanghai (Handsel Books, $24.95, 404 pages), Bulgarian prize-winning author Angel Wagenstein combines anguish, alienation, intrigue, physical suffering, excitement and the arbitrariness of fate. The fine translation from the Bulgarian by Elizabeth Frank and Deliana Simeonova retains the author's mordant and ironic tone.
