Best European Fiction 2013

PRAISE FOR Best European Fiction

“Best European Fiction 2010… offers an appealingly diverse look at the Continent’s fiction scene.” THE NEW YORK TIMES

“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.” FINANCIAL TIMES

“With the new anthology Best European Fiction… our literary world just got wider.” TIME MAGAZINE

“The collection’s diverse range of styles includes more experimental works than a typical American anthology might… [Mr. Hemon’s] only criteria were to include the best works from as many countries as possible.” WALL STREET JOURNAL

“This is a precious opportunity to understand more deeply the obsessions, hopes and fears of each nation’s literary psyche—a sort of international show-and-tell of the soul.” THE GUARDIAN

“Readers for whom the expression ‘foreign literature’ means the work of Canada’s Alice Munro stand to have their eyes opened wide and their reading exposure exploded as they encounter works from places such as Croatia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia (and, yes, from more familiar terrain, such as Spain, the UK, and Russia).” BOOKLIST STARRED REVIEW

“[W]e can be thankful to have so many talented new voices to discover.” LIBRARY JOURNAL

“[W]hat the reader takes from them are not only the usual pleasures of fiction—the twists and turns of plot, chance to inhabit other lives, other ways of being—but new ways of thinking about how to tell a story.” CHRISTOPHER MERRILL, PRI’S “THE WORLD” HOLIDAY PICK

“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.” TIME OUT CHICAGO

“Editor Aleksandar Hemon declares in his preface that at the heart of this compilation is the ‘nonnegotiable need for communication with the world, wherever it may be,’ and asserts that ongoing translation is crucial to this process. The English-language reading world, ‘wherever it may be,’ is grateful.” THE BELIEVER

“Does European literature exist? Of course it does, and this collection of forty-one stories proves it.” THE INDEPENDENT