Volume 34, Number 20 · December 17, 1987
Polish Nightmares
By Neal Ascherson
Moonrise, Moonset
by Tadeusz Konwicki, translated by Richard Lourie
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 344 pp., $19.95
The Color of Blood
by Brian Moore
Dutton, 182 pp., $16.95
There is a kind of dying star called a white dwarf. This is a celestial body that was once enormous and radiant but is now falling in upon itself, becoming smaller in size and yet inconceivably greater in density and mass. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, an episode of increased energy output and soaring temperature is followed by partial core collapse. But total implosion, 'catastrophic collapse,' does not quite take place, and the star stabilizes as a white dwarf:
Review, 3254 words
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