BOOK REVIEW / Prussia's answer to Scarlett O'Hara: 'The Hour of the Women' - Christian von Krockow, trs Krishna Winston: Faber, 14.99

IT SOMETIMES seems as if there are no new stories left unretrieved from the Second World War, only elaborations of old ones. But Libussa Fritz-Krockow's experiences in Germany between 1944 and 1947, escorted on to the page by her brother Christian in a gripping first-person narrative, belong to a neglected historical moment, when Germany (under pressure from Stalin) lost almost a third of its territory to Poland. As an upper-class young Prussian woman's charmed life gives way to a ferocious struggle for daily survival, with derring-do journeys East and West, there are unmistakable echoes of Gone With The Wind.

The story begins unpromisingly with Libussa's wedding in 1944 and at this stage readers not on intimate terms with Pomerania will be regularly flipping back to the frontispiece maps. But soon, as the Russians arrive, and the pregnant Libussa persuades her family not to commit suicide but to flee East, it turns into a compelling tale of birth, death, and the bits in between. Baby Claudia is eventually born in hiding, and, despite dysentery and typhoid, Libussa (plus baby, mother, stepfather, and trusty servant Marie) return to their native village.

There, the manor (their Tara) has been despoiled, and they outwit the looting, raping Russians by nocturnal raids on their former vegetable garden. And here the fearless Libussa, now clearly Scarlett O'Hara, comes into her own, holding the family together, procuring and foraging with extraordinary resourcefulness and no shred of self-

pity. As the Poles take over, we thrill to her successes, like the artful theft of a chicken from the Polish mayor. (War isn't egalitarian and the family's former wealth clearly helps: a mink is sold for zlotys.) Without fuel for evening light, they recite their way through the bleak dark evenings, exchanging remembered treasures of German classical literature.

The subsequent story of Libussa's solo journey West, her return East to what had become Poland to collect the family, and the final move back to Germany are crowded with menace and telling incident. Twice she saves her baronial stepfather, the second time audaciously springing him from a Russian camp in Leipzig. The Krockows are no defenders of Nazism: on the contrary, Christian's preface roundly indicts rigid Prussian, Protestant and masculine values. With most of the men away, the women come into their own, repossessing their strength. The few remaining men are high-minded but noticeably reluctant to get down and scout for spinach.

Libussa's story is plainly told, though poorly translated. Read against the background of Sarajevo, it is a terrible reminder of the human consequences of ethnic enmity and shifts of national boundaries, and a gratifying affirmation of the human capacity to survive.