A BOOK of short stories by Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator, entitled Escape to Hell, is being published in English for the first time. 

The book, available in North America , shows the Libyan leader to be "a man of letters fascinated with images and metaphors, and concerned with the destruction of our planet", according to Alain Stanke, his Montreal publishers. 

Like any dutiful author, he has agreed to plug his book in interviews on television - the BBC, Canadian television and CNN being the current favourites for talks. In February Colonel Gaddafi participated in a live satellite link-up with journalists in New York. 

Donald Smith, the publisher's English language editor, told journalist at the book-launch : "This is a side of Gaddafi people don't normally see. The theme of many of the stories is that nature, not technology, is going to save the world." The book does not contain many laughs. In one story, The Astronaut, the central figure returns to Earth and, after a conversation with a peasant, commits suicide.  

It contains a lot of information about the Earth's size compared to other planets. 

Many of the other 11 short "stories" read more like polemics, with plenty of advice on how we must all return to Mother Nature. In The Blessed Herb and the Cursed Tree, the Libyan leader offers the sage advice that an herb for mental illness must be further developed "as well as using artichokes". 

The book also contains four essays, including Is Communism Truly Dead? 

The book is foreword by the journalist Pierre Salinger, one-time aide to President Kennedy and a man who believes that Gaddafi disavowed terrorism years ago, and that Syria was behind the Lockerbie bombing. He describes the volume as giving "a very special view about a unique mentality - one that is certainly not available to the Western media". 

Gaddafi apparently wrote the short stories during his increasingly-frequent retreats to his tent in the desert. His previous literary adventure, Green Book, was published 18 years ago and outlined his plans for a radical experiment in democracy in which all power rested with popular committees. One of Gaddafi's famous sayings was his comment on the Greens astonishing victory in German and European elections in 1992 '' the all read my Green Book, and made a good electoral progress.''