Best European Fiction 2010
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
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" Ornanà 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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hemon (The Lazarus Project) edits the inaugural volume of an anthology of European short fiction, and while the maiden outing has many fine moments, there's room for improvement in upcoming years. The mix of authors 35 writers from 30 countries is excellent and includes better knowns with unknowns, though each piece is allotted an average of 10 pages, leading several of the more promising works to feel truncated. Other pieces (such as Giulio Mozzi's story, originally written as part of an art exhibit) don't seem like the best work to represent an author. Still, there is much excellent work. Christine Montalbetti's surreal and enigmatic "Hotel Komaba Eminence (with Haruki Murakami)" plays on the author's obsession with the Japanese writer. In Igor Stiks's terse but well-managed "At the Sarajevo Market," the discovery of a watch at a Bosnian marketplace triggers a crisis between war-fatigued lovers. Victor Pelevin's acidic satire "Friedmann Space" evolves into a Borgesian tale of Russian scientists sending "lucrenauts" past the "Schwarzenegger threshold" to report back on the black hole like domain of the megarich. This is a good start one hopes that next year's volume will be a more consistent collection.
