BRIEFLY NOTED.

Lost Hearts in Italy, by Andrea Lee (Random House; $23.95). The fall from innocence of Americans abroad is a Jamesian theme, but here the Grand Tour has been replaced by international finance and the naifs are married Harvard grads, posted to Rome. The husband, the scion of a shabby but genteel New England clan, disdains his Wasp heritage and worships his black wife; she is drawn to a predatory Italian, a "peasant" who has bullied his way to the helm of a corporate empire. The adultery plays out in first-class airport lounges and ornate hotel rooms, and Rome reprises its traditional role as the city of dissolution, "rich and coarse at the same time, like a mixture of sackcloth and brocade." In chillingly urbane prose, Lee takes the full measure of her characters' folly, as they prove faithless not only to each other but to themselves.

Playing in the Light, by Zoe Wicomb (New Press; $24.95). In her ambitious third novel, Wicomb explores South Africa's history through a woman's attempt to answer questions surrounding her past. Marion Campbell discovers that she is the daughter of "play-whites," a couple legally classified as "coloured" who dared to obliterate their history and cut family ties in order to acquire the benefits of whiteness. Marion's mother plastered herself with makeup to prevent her body from betraying her; in her father's view, "whiteness is without restrictions. It has the fluidity of milk; its glow is far-reaching." The subterfuge, however, made for an unhappy household. Marion's friendship with a young black woman deepens her understanding of the importance of historical memory, and her struggle for self-knowledge becomes, in Wicomb's able hands, a sign of South Africa's hopeful post-apartheid future.

Horace Greeley, by Robert C. Williams (New York University; $34.95). Horace ...