EACH OF EDGARDO Cozarinsky's short stories seems to hold enough plot and hidden secrets for a whole novel or film-script. His little dramas of revenge or regret are built around the theme of exile, and involve the investigation of past events - half-remembered, revealed by evidence left hidden between the leaves of a book, found in an archive, or recounted in tales passed down through successive generations of a family.

Throughout the stories - there are eleven - Cozarinsky uses dates and facts, and occasionally names, which look as though they are taken from recent history. Or is he making some of them up to tease us? In the last and most intriguing story, 'Emigré Hotel', a young American scholar