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 Konrad (Hungary): "Jeremiah's Terrible Tale"
- Steinar Bragi (Iceland): "The Sky Over Thingvellir"
- Julian Gough (Ireland: English): "The Orphan and the Mob"
- Ornani Choileain (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 jose ferreiro"
- Cosmin Manolache (Romania): "Three Hundred Cups"
- Victor Pelevin (Russia): "Friedmann Space"
- David Albahari (Serbia): "The Basilica in Lyon"
- Peter Kristufek (Slovakia): from The Prompter
- Andrej Blatnik (Slovenia): from You Do Understand?
- Julian Rios (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"
Industry Reviews
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
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? --Jessa Crispin
Best European Fiction 2010 should 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
Dalkey has published an anthology of short fiction by European writers, and the result, Best European Fiction 2010, is one of the most remarkable collections I've read vital, fascinating, and even more comprehensive than I would have thought possible. --Michael Schaub
If Dalkey can keep it up, this could easily become the most important annual literary anthology in America. Which is ironic. --Tom Lynch
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. --Suzi Feay
The writers in Best European 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
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. --Alicia Kennedy
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 Buening
[I]deal for browsing and has something for almost every taste. . . we can be thankful to have so many talented new voices to discover.
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 The Lazarus Project.
