The Dalkey Archive Press is a unique enterprise, being a publisher of literary fiction that is both independent and non-profit making. This gives them the freedom to publish a unique range of title which, to quote the website, “in some way or another, upsets the apple cart, that they work against what is expected, that they in some way challenge received notions, whether those are literary, social or political”.
Best European Fiction 2010 is a case in point, being a fascinating collection of short fiction which very much pushed the boundaries of this reader at least, and much to his reading pleasure.
The idea is simple, but executing it must have been a huge exercise:
- take one author from every European nation and publish a short work from them all,
- provide a biography of each author, together with a personal statement,
- provide a comprehensive list of online literary resources for each of the nations represented.
This bookblog, A Common Reader, tends to specialise in European literature in translation, but even I had never read anything before from the lesser known countries like Slovenia, Serbia and Albania. And the effect of reading these 35 or so stories was to make me want more from quite a number of these previously unknown authors. The quality of the writing is high throughout the book and the range of topics is vast. There are very few stories in the book which don’t surprise in one way or another.
I couldn’t possible review all 35 stories, but a few are worth a quick mention:
Ornela Vorpsi of Albania give a perfect snapshot of life as a child in Albania in “The Country Where No One Ever Dies”, a piece of writing which combines the comfort-blanket experiences of a sick child being cared for by her grand-mother, with the threatening future awaiting her in a society of macho-values where a much loved sister can morph into a whore without even realising it, attracting all the penalties she apparently deserved all along.
Romanian Cosmin Manolache writes in “300 Cups” of a visit to his country’s Military Museum where he finds the space capsule in which the only Romanian cosmonaut ventured into orbit. This surreal piece ends with a list of the 300 toasts the space travellers might have drunk while hurtling through the void, each toast contributing in some way to a bizarre history of Romania (?) or maybe just a picture of the writer’s trouble mind.
On a much more accessible level, Stephan Enter of the Netherlands writes in “Resistance” a wonderful story of a junior chess club. Their mundane and plodding instructor ex-Army major Mr Vink has drilled his charges in the basics of chess and has done a reasonable job in introducing the boys to the game, but perhaps without the style and flair they would need to win tournaments. One day, the boys arrive for their meeting to find Mr Wiesveld in charge, who explains that Mr Vink has gone away for three months. Under Mr Wiesveld’s charge, the boys take off in new directions, away from the systematic calculations of Mr Vink and into a place where intuition and instinct come to the fore and chess becomes a matter of gambling and bluffing, with style at the forefront rather than mathematics. This is a brilliant portrait of an inspired teacher who manages to impart a love for the game which goes much further than the mild interest the boys had before.
I enjoyed Slovenian Andrej Blatnik‘s episodes from his book, “You Do Understand”, a set of brief portraits of relationships, full of resonance and yearning:
I lay there with my eyes closed, waiting for my husband to vacate his half of the bed. To go to work of course. He’ll get a sandwich on the corner. He’ll have a coffee during his first meeting. Then he’ll call home. To make sure I’m still there and haven’t run away. I’m not going to. I’m going to open that box of old snapshots again. There were no hard drives in those days. I’ll go through photo by photo, and with each one think, That was a day I loved you.
The United Kingdom is represented by Wales (Penny Simpson), England (Deborah Levy) and Scotland (Alasdair Gray). Being very familiar with Alasdair Gray’s work I am a little surprised at the the choice of his poem, The Ballad of Anne Bonny – the only poem in the book in fact. However, its not one I’d read before so I’m glad it was there. Penny Simpson’s story, Indigo’s Mermaid, is superbly funny and is set in the market town of Lewes, East Sussex, near where I live – a bonus for me, but a rather incongruous setting among the Budapests, and Bucharests of the other pieces in the book!
I have found reviewing this book has reminded me of how very good it is and once again am struck by its uniqueness. In the preface Zadie Smith refers to its, “epigraphic, disjointed structure. Many of these already short stories are cut into shorter sub-titled sections, like verbal snapshots laid randomly on top of each other – and they end abruptly”, but, “for me this anthology and the series that is to follow reprsents a personal enrichment . . . there should be more of that sort of thing”. I found that although the book is composed of these sketches, they do in fact make a very satisfying whole. Its a little like a collage put together by someone with a view to the final overall pattern, a snapshot survey of radical writing in Europe, which is surely valid in its own right.
The editor Aleksandar Hemon reminds us in his introduction that there is no better way to monitor the rapid development in European literatures than the short story. “The short story still has the flavour of a report from the front lines of history and existence”.
Finally, I’d just like to comment on the quality of the translations. Obviously I can’t comment on their fidelity to the original (couple of dozen?) languages, but they certainly read completely naturally with none of that “clunkiness” which can so easily creep in. I am pleased that the book lists all the translators at the back with a short biography of each. They deserve as much.
Really, I can’t recommend this volume enough. I can only hope that the Dalkey Archive Press and Aleksander Hemon can fulfil their goal of making this “Best of” an annual event.
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