Books: Rural Life in Ruritania

TALES OF WAR (140 pp.) — Mihail Sadoveanu — Twayne ($2.95).

EVENING TALES (374 pp.) — Mihail Sadoveanu — Twayne ($3.95).

Not all Iron Curtain authors share —or can afford to indulge— the Poles' ob session with political commentary. Mihail Sadoveanu, the son of an illiterate Ruma nian peasant, somehow learned to write, and from 1904 until his death last year turned out 120 books, became one of his country's most famous authors. He was in no sense an apolitical artist — in fact, he served as president of the first Presidium when the Russians...