Best European Fiction

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.
[I]deal for browsing and has something for almost every taste. . . we can be thankful to have so many talented new voices to discover.
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
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
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
If Dalkey can keep it up, this could easily become the most important annual literary anthology in America. Which is ironic. --Tom Lynch
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
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
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
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
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