John Berger, 82, is a major British writer of fiction, essays and art criticism whose 1972 television series and book spinoff, "Ways of Seeing," have become a mainstay in art appreciation.

He's also an adamant and ardent leftist who donated part of his winnings from the 1982 Booker Prize to the Black Panthers organization in Great Britain.

		"FROM A TO X: A STORY IN LETTERS" By John Berger Verso ($22.95)

Berger's new work is a short epistolary novel told largely in the letters of A'ida, a pharmacist and radical, to her lover, Xavier, serving life sentences for terrorism convictions in an unnamed country under totalitarianism.

Written beautifully with the kinds of descriptions that a only writer like Berger, who was a successful painter, can create, the novel works as a series of prose images but not as fiction overall. It's disjointed and too mannered to be the story of believable people.

A'ida is an attractive character: smart, faithful, compassionate, a lyrical writer -- in short the ideal. Xavier, whose responses can be found in notes written on her letters (Berger's prologue says her letters were found in his cell), is a vague presence mouthing leftist cliches.

The book, now under consideration for another Booker Prize, posits a vision of a "community" of the people against a brutal state but adds little that's original to that vision.