Synopses & Reviews
Historically, English-language readers have been great fans of European literature, and names like Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, and Thomas Mann are so familiar we hardly think of them as foreign at all. What those writers brought to English-language literature was a wide variety of new ideas, styles, and ways of seeing the world. Yet times have changed, and how much do we even know about the richly diverse literature being written in Europe today?
Best European Fiction 2010 is the inaugural installment of what will become an annual anthology of stories from across Europe. Edited by acclaimed Bosnian novelist and MacArthur "Genius-Award" winner Aleksandar Hemon, and with dozens of editorial, media, and programming partners in the U.S., UK, and Europe, the
Best European Fiction series will be a window onto what's happening right now in literary scenes throughout Europe, where the next Kafka, Flaubert, or Mann is waiting to be discovered.
List of contributors
- Preface: Zadie Smith
- Introduction: Aleksandar Hemon
- Ornela Vorpsi (Albania): from The Country Where No One Ever Dies
- Antonio Fian (Austria): from While Sleeping
- Peter Terrin (Belgium: Dutch): from "The Murderer"
- Jean-Philippe Toussaint (Belgium: French): "Zidane's Melancholy"
- Igor Stiks (Bosnia): "At the Sarajevo Market"
- Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria): "And All Turned Moon"
- Neven Usumovic (Croatia): "Veres"
- Naja Marie Aidt (Denmark): "Bulbjerg"
- Elo Viiding (Estonia): "Foreign Women"
- Juhani Brander (Finland): from Extinction
- Christine Montalbetti (France): "Hotel Komaba Eminence" (with Haruki Murakami)
- George Konrád (Hungary): "Jeremiah's Terrible Tale"
- Steinar Bragi (Iceland): "The Sky Over Thingvellir"
- Julian Gough (Ireland: English): "The Orphan and the Mob"
- Ornaní Choileáin (Ireland: Irish): "Camino"
- Giulio Mozzi (AKA Carlo Dalcielo) (Italy): "Carlo Doesn't Know How to Read"
- Inga Abele (Latvia): "Ants and Bumblebees"
- Mathias Ospelt (Liechtenstein): "Deep In the Snow"
- Giedra Radvilaviciute˙ (Lithuania): "The Allure of the Text"
- Goce Smilevski (Macedonia): "Fourteen Little Gustavs"
- Stephan Enter (Netherlands): "Resistance"
- Jon Fosse (Norway): "Waves of Stone"
- Michal Witkowski (Poland): "Didi"
- Valter Hugo Mãe (Portugal): "dona malva and senhor josé ferreiro"
- Cosmin Manolache (Romania): "Three Hundred Cups"
- Victor Pelevin (Russia): "Friedmann Space"
- David Albahari (Serbia): "The Basilica in Lyon"
- Peter Kristúfek (Slovakia): from The Prompter
- Andrej Blatnik (Slovenia): from You Do Understand?
- Julián Ríos (Spain: Castilian): "Revelation on the Boulevard of Crime"
- Josep Fonalleras (Spain: Catalan): "Noir in Five Parts and an Epilogue"
- Peter Stamm (Switzerland): "Ice Moon"
- Deborah Levy (United Kingdom: England): from Swimming Home
- Alasdair Gray (United Kingdom: Scotland): "The Ballad of Ann Bonny"
- Penny Simpson (United Kingdom: Wales): "Indigo's Mermaid"
Review
"The writers in seem a more adventurous bunch than their American counterparts. They experiment freely with structure and venture more often down the path of metafiction, debating the direction of a story even as their characters are entangled in it." Radhicka Jones
Review
"Starred Review. Dalkey Archive Press inaugurates a planned series of annual anthologies of European fiction with this impressive first volume...an insightful preface by novelist Zadie Smith...as well as an introduction by Bosnian writer and volume editor Aleksander Hemon, author of the highly acclaimed novel ." Time
Review
"Though as rocky and subject to reader bias as any wide-ranging anthology, much of the work in this first title is startling in its ingenuity and will hopefully be successful enough for publisher Dalkey Archive to produce more editions. Damn the torpedoes." Michael Schaub Bookslut
Review
"If Dalkey can keep it up, this could easily become the most important annual literary anthology in America. Which is ironic." Michael Buening PopMatters
Review
"There are other traditions, ways of being, landscapes that might suit you better than those with which you have been provided, and how will you know that unless you go wandering?" Tom Lynch Newcity Lit
Review
"This is the first anthology of its kind, and after reading it you may be... furious that such quality work has been kept from you." Jessa Crispin The Smart Set
Review
"The work is vibrant, varied, sometimes downright odd. As [Zadie] Smith says [in her preface]: 'I was educated in a largely Anglo-American library, and it is sometimes dull to stare at the same four walls all day.' Here's the antidote." Alicia Kennedy Paste Magazine
Review
[I]deal for browsing and has something for almost every taste. . . we can be thankful to have so many talented new voices to discover.The book tilts toward unconventional storytelling techniques. And while we"ve heard complaints about this before--why only translate the most difficult work coming out of Europe?--it makes sense here. The book isn"t testing the boundaries, it"s opening them up. -- Jonathan Messinger
Review
Best European Fiction 2010should remind Americans of the exciting work being done across the Atlantic, especially by writers who are experimenting with the short story on the fringes of the EU. -- Brian Hurley
Review
"Dalkey has published an anthology of short fiction by European writers, and the result, , is one of the most remarkable collections I've read--vital, fascinating, and even more comprehensive than I would have thought possible." Booklist
Synopsis
Historically, English-language readers have been great fans of European literature, and names like Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, and Thomas Mann are so familiar we hardly think of them as foreign at all. What those writers brought to English-language literature was a wide variety of new ideas, styles, and ways of seeing the world. Yet times have changed, and how much do we even know about the richly diverse literature being written in Europe today?
Best European Fiction 2010 is the inaugural installment of what will become an annual anthology of stories from across Europe. Edited by acclaimed Bosnian novelist and MacArthur 'Genius-Award' winner Aleksandar Hemon, and with dozens of editorial, media, and programming partners in the U.S., UK, and Europe, the Best European Fiction series will be a window onto what's happening right now in literary scenes throughout Europe, where the next Kafka, Flaubert, or Mann is waiting to be discovered.
Synopsis
The start of the most ambitious editorial project in Dalkey Archive's history.
About the Author
Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Question of Bruno, Nowhere Man, and The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2008. Born in Sarajevo, Hemon visited Chicago in 1992, intending to stay for several months. While there, Sarajevo came under siege, and he was unable to return home. Hemon wrote his first story in English in 1995. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and a "Genius Grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2004. He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughter.