Best European Fiction 2010

Book excerpt: 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