BOOKS:France

Love with the Newly Rich Stranger

What Lila Says by "Chimo"; Plon; 174 pages

It seems to happen periodically in France: a steamy first novel by an unknown author shocks the public and becomes an overnight best seller. This year's sensation is What Lila Says. Readers and lofty-browed reviewers agree: the story of Lila, a virginal Roman Catholic girl of 16, and Chimo, her 19-year-old lover of North African descent, has genuine literary merit. The unanswered question: Who is author Chimo? Is he, or possibly she, a gifted though uneducated adolescent beur--slang for Arab--or an experienced professional writer? A lawyer delivered the manuscript, says the publisher, and it had been composed with a ballpoint pen.

Heroine Lila looks like an angel, reports Chimo, but as early as the third page she rejects chastity, and she soon becomes his muse. They have a close encounter on his bike that has been singled out for its powerful eroticism and supple athleticism. In his diary, love-struck Chimo records their interludes, which are played out against the decaying, despairing slums of suburban Paris. Wrote L'Express: "If Lila moves us, it is first of all because of its disconcerting charm. That fragile ingenuity that contrasts so poetically with the smutty brutality of the subject matter." Titillating and innocent all at once, the book is either a grand hoax or a heartfelt text by a talented prodigy, and the French are not the only ones who want to know what Lila says. Foreign rights have been sold to 11 publishing houses for $360,000, a record sum in France for a first novel. If Chimo is for real, and if Lila is, they'll need a little extra room on the bike for moneybags.

BOOKS:United States

A Scary Future for the Developing World

The Ends of the Earth by Robert D. Kaplan Random House; 438 pages

In 1994 American journalist Robert D. Kaplan wrote a scary--and controversial--article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine. Titled "The Coming Anarchy," it argued that environmental and geopolitical challenges doomed the developing world to a dismal future. In his new book, The Ends of the Earth--a riveting travelogue beginning in West Africa and ending in Southeast Asia--the author provides more evidence for his gloomy outlook. "For those who still didn't believe that we live in revolutionary times," he writes, "I had in mind a travel document that would serve as shock therapy." Yet his book is a more finely shaded document than his original article, and he finds places of hope as well as scenes of misery among developing countries.

The worst news comes from sub-Saharan Africa, where deforestation and desertification in countries such as Liberia force rural villagers to migrate to already overcrowded cities in search of better lives. There, Kaplan observes, traditional culture breaks down, giving way to violent crime, soaring birthrates and the spread of diseases like aids. His most upbeat report comes from Iran. Despite its rogue-state image, Kaplan maintains, the country is virtually crime-free, and its government affords women greater rights than other Arab nations do and has even allowed broadcasts of the racy U.S. TV show Baywatch. Kaplan thinks the resumption of formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Tehran is inevitable because the Iranian government's hostility toward the "Great Satan" is not shared by the masses.

MOVIES:Spain

Divided Loyalty, Invincible Spirit

Libertarias Directed by Vicente Aranda

As if barricading itself from memories of a nightmare past, Spain has left to foreigners the task of chronicling on-screen the tragic days of its Civil War. Last year British filmmaker Ken Loach in Land and Freedom memorably tracked a band of anarchists in eastern Spain in 1936-37 who became disillusioned with their cause as communists from Moscow assumed control. Now, released in time for the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of violence on July 18, 1936, comes Libertarias, the first Spanish-directed and -produced feature film examining the war from the leftist viewpoint. Says filmmaker Vicente Aranda, 69: "We are the children and grandchildren of those who lived through an exceptional time, and whose story has never been told."

Starring three of the country's leading film actresses, his movie concerns a group of women who join a militia in Barcelona and make their way to the front. Victoria Abril plays a spiritualist in touch with the dead, Ana Belen is an ardent freedom fighter, and Ariadna Gil is a nun on the run from her convent. The women insist on fighting and working with the men as equals. Eager to understand the upheavals that divided their country decades ago, more than half a million Spanish moviegoers have made the film a success at the box office, with a $2.5 million gross. Even so, critics have been less pleased. Madrid's daily El Pais likened Libertarias to branches of a tree without a trunk. It is a "mixture of good ingredients linked together in an excessively visible form," the newspaper concluded, but "the vivid, emotional scenes do not merge together."

VIDEO:Mexico

The Shining Star Of a Golden Era

100 Years of Mexican Cinema: Pedro Infante; directed by Luis Kelly; Videovisa

Pedro Infante was one of Mexico's greatest screen idols. When he died in 1957 at age 39, in a plane crash over the Yucatan, the country went into a period of mourning that has yet to end. Hundreds still visit his tomb in Mexico City on April 15, the date of his death, though many devotees are said to believe that--like Elvis--he lives on in hiding. Director Luis Kelly thought the best way to inaugurate a video series on the Mexican cinema's centennial was with a retrospective on the star of the nation's filmmaking golden age in the 1940s and '50s. The 55-min., Spanish-language video has some 40 photographs of Infante not previously published, as well as interviews with people who knew him best.

Ismael Rodriguez and Infante formed one of the most enduring director-actor partnerships in Mexican films. In the video, Rodriguez describes how Infante approached his role in Tizoc, for which he won the Berlin Film Festival's best actor award. To make sure his portrayal of an Indian was accurate, Infante chose his own sandals in a country market; he had to be talked out of buying a burro there as well. An avid admirer of women, he was involved with a score of famous beauties. In an emotional scene, Infante's widow Irma Dorantes, who refused for 39 years to speak publicly about him, barely holds back tears as she maintains that for her the time is still not right to say what she feels.

--Reported by Carol Poirier/Paris, Mary Sutter/Mexico City and Jane Walker/Madrid