Best European Fiction 2018 [Paperback]

Since its inaugural appearance in 2010,Best European Fictionhas become an essential resource for readers, critics, and publishers interested in contemporary European literature. In this, the ninth installment of the series, the anthology continues its commitment to bringing together some of the most exciting prose writing in Europe today.Best European Fiction 2018is a compendium of stories by both established writers and newcomers, ranging from Ireland to Eastern Europe, ripe for the discovery of curious readers around the world. It is hard to imagine another [anthology] quite as willing to interrogate, with expansive generosity and inclusiveness, the borders both of Europe and of fiction itself... Besides serving up texts that might otherwise remain inaccessible to Anglophone readers, the volume's greatest strength lies in its attention to the problems of translation itself. Best European Fiction 2018brings together some of the most innovative writers working in Europe today. Whether they are established novelists such as Gy??rgy Sp??r?? (Captivity), L??dia Jorge (The Painter of Birds), and Amanda Michalopoulou (Why I Killed My Best Friend), or up-and-coming young writers such as Thomas Morris, Maartje Wortel, and Hugh Fulham-McQuillan, every one of them expands our sense of what fiction can be.Although not a themed anthology, certain motifs and obsessions crop up again and again in this year???s harvest of Europe???s best. Narratives of grief, madness, dystopia, and animal absurdity predominate. In one story, a chameleon escapes from a Werner Herzog film; in another, a man sprouts a second phallus. A young boy contemplates his life as a one-eyed pirate, and a homeless pig navigates its way through a strange city ruled by robots.Representing thirty countries from Iceland to Estonia,Best European Fiction 2018is fresh proof that, though Europe???s political life may splutter and splinter, its literary imagination is alive and well.???[I]del£$