Fiction from Ireland, South Africa by way of Australia and Germany have inaugurated the new year in books.

Whether their arrival is any indication that there will be a more international flavor to our reading choices, it's clear that American publishers seem more interested now in tapping into the international pool of authors despite several hurdles.

The first is style. With some exceptions, American literature in the 21st century reads much like it did in the previous one -- linear, plot-driven and focused on characters. Newer international fiction is more experimental in form.

The second leap is over writing that's about the real world to encounter fiction concerned with intellectual and philosophical concepts.

For example:

Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier (Grove/Atlantic, $25).

With a hero whose preoccupation is classical languages, this European best-seller is as much a rumination on philosophy as it is historical novel about 20th-century dictatorship.

Clearly, the two are not compatible, as 57-year-old Raimund Gregorius discovers. Living a monastic life in Bern, he's as punctual as a Swiss cuckoo clock as he teaches high schoolers classical languages until a bizarre meeting with a deranged Portuguese woman upsets his world.

On one level, the novel is about the awakening of Gregorius' soul to a world of passionate intensity and personal sacrifice for a good cause.

The target of his journey to Lisbon is the late Amadeu de Prado, a physician who fought against the repressive Salazar regime in the Portugal of the 1970s. His obscure book, "A Goldsmith of Words," is the bait that draws the hermit out of his shell.

But, as we struggle through the clumsy translation, we find the author testing a variety of ideas including the power and meaning of different languages, most notably Portuguese.

Much of the symbolism is obvious (Gregorius breaks his thick glasses; new ones make him see all the better), the conversations grow overwrought and repetitive, but the imagery, especially of scenes of Lisbon is exquisitely drawn.

I was both bored and enchanted by Mercier's ambitious range and his obsessive intellectualism, but also confused by the book's shifting center.

What is the center -- opposing repression or the power of words? I think you have to take your pick.

J.M. Coetzee, a native of South Africa now a citizen of Australia, is not only a Nobel winner, but a difficult, stolid writer who has managed to irritate as well as inform.

He stays true to his reputation, but not form in "Diary of a Bad Year" (Viking, $24.95).

The pages of his short novel are split horizontally by lines separating the stories of three characters living in a Sydney apartment building.

Senor C, a 72-year-old writer, engages Anya, an attractive young woman, to type his manuscript of essays for a book, "Strong Opinions."

The top stream of type are C's opinions, while the lower stretches are Anya's comments on both his work and his lecherous glances.

Gradually, Alan, Anya's boyfriend, is worked into the mix as the slight story moves to a sentimental conclusion.

Is this "novel" really a clever way for Coetzee to express his dislike of world politicians, views on sexual repression and the war on terror and admiration for Bach, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and filter them through a younger person?

In fact, Anya and the less interesting Alan act as foils to Senor C's growing understanding of his opinionated self.

The other question: How do you read "Diary of a Bad Year?" Take in each page or read the sections separately?

I think that only the page-by-page approach works to follow the main characters' transformations.

In the end, Coetzee, as usual, impresses with his control of language -- seldom a spare word appears -- and hard-edged vision of an unfriendly world.

Where he falters is in the patent transparency of his gimmick, the split screen as it were of movies. It's a novelty that wears thin as we wait, in vain, for the stories to somehow merge into a whole.

After these intellectual workouts, the Irish novelist Roddy Doyle offers us a charming Gaelic respite in "The Deportees and Other Stories" (Viking, $24.95).

It's a different Ireland in the 21st century, a land of imports rather than exports as immigrants pour into prosperous Dublin.

Doyle has taken note:

"It happened, I think, sometime in the mid-'90s," he writes. "I went to bed in one country and woke up in a different one."

These eight stories appeared in a newspaper launched by Nigerian immigrants and they touch on the obvious themes of dislocation and fitting in.

Of course, there's a chapter titled "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" along with tales about learning to get by in school when you're African and breaking stereotypes.

A character from Doyle's well-known novel, "The Commitments," shows up. Jimmy Rabbitte, who started the scruffy rock band, now launches a multi-cultural group to play folk music.

Aside from a gloomy Gothic horror, "The Pram," these stories are written with affection and humor for the Irish and their new neighbors.

Doyle speaks tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland. Tickets: 412-622-8866.