ANDREI GELASIMOV was born in 1965 in Irkutsk, Russia. He studied at the Yakutsk State University (Faculty of Foreign Languages), and attended directing classes at the Moscow Theater Institute. His first published short story, “The Tender Age,” appeared to great acclaim in 2000, receiving the Best Debut, Appollon Grigoriev, and Belkin literary awards. Gelasimov is considered one of the most popular young Russian writers working today.
FRODE GRYTTEN was born in 1960 in Odda, Norway, which has served as the setting for much of his fiction. A journalist for fifteen years, he developed a reputation for his short stories, which have been collected in such books as Langdistansesvømmar (Long-Distance Swimmer, 1990) and Popsongar (Popsongs, 2001). His novel Bikubesong (Beehive Song, 1999), won the Brage Prize from the Norwegian Publishers’ Association, and was a nominee for the Nordic Council’s Prize for Literature. His most recent novel, Flytande bjørn (2005; The Shadow in the River, 2008), won the Nynorsk Literature Prize and the Melsom Prize. His story in this anthology is from a recent collection entitled Rom ved havet, rom i byen (Rooms by the Sea, Rooms in the City, 2007), where each piece is based upon and paired with a painting by Edward Hopper.
MERCÈ IBARZ was born in 1954 in Saidí, Spain. She is an author, journalist, and cultural critic and has published novels, short stories, a biography of the celebrated Catalan author Mercè Rodoreda, and essays on film and photography. Her first work of fiction—though as much a work of reportage, autobiography, and travel writing—was La terra retirada (The Secluded Land, 1992), about her native village. This was followed by the novel La palmera de blat (The Palm Tree of Wheat) in 1995, after which Ibarz did not publish another work of fiction until 2002, when A la ciutat en obres (In the City of Works), a collection of short stories, appeared. Comfortable in various registers, her books form an assemblage of personal narrative and poetic prose, as well as evocations of quotidian life both as it is lived and as it is imagined. Her work has been translated into numerous major European languages.
NORA IKSTENA was born in 1969 in Riga, Latvia. She made her literary debut in 1993 with her biography of prewar writer and cultural activist Anna Rmane enia, followed by two short story collections and, in 1998, the publication of her novel Dzves svinšana (A Celebration of Life), which became a Latvian bestseller. Since then, the author has written a book almost every year—from collections of short stories or fairy tales, to full-length novels and biographies. Alongside her own work, she has edited the collected works of her literary mentor and teacher Dzintars Sodums, an accomplished Latvian-American poet, writer, and translator. Ikstena helped found the Latvian Literature Centre, the International Writers and Translators House in Ventspils, and the annual Prose Readings festival. She is a member and former chair of the National Culture Council. Her latest work includes the novel Amour fou and a book of observations and commentaries titled Šokoldes Jzus (Chocolate Jesus, 2009). She is the recipient of the prestigious Baltic Assembly Award, the Three Star Order of Latvia, as well as numerous national awards. Ikstena and her husband divide their time between Latvia, Georgia, and Germany.
DRAGO JANAR was born in 1948 in Maribor, Slovenia, and is one of the best-known Slovenian writers at home and abroad. After studying law, he worked as a journalist, an editor, and a freelance writer, and traveled to both the U.S. and Germany. As a President of the Slovenian PEN Center between 1987 and 1991, he was engaged in the rise of democracy in Slovenia and Yugoslavia. In 1993, he received the highest Slovenian literary award, the France-Preseren Prize, for his lifetime achievement. He won the European Short Story Award in 1994, was awarded the Herder Prize for Literature in 2003, was awarded the Jean Amery Award—conferred by the Office of the Austrian President—for his contributions to the Central European canon in 2007, and in 2009 was awarded the Premio Hemingway. His novels include Galjot (The Galley Slave, 1978), Severni sij (1984; Northern Lights, 2001), and Posmehljivo poželenje (1993; Mocking Desire, 1998). He now lives in Ljubljana.
DANUT KALINAUSKAIT was born in 1959 in Kaunas, Lithuania. She is a graduate of Vilnius University, where she studied Lithuanian literature. She published her first book of short stories, Iš jusi šviesa (The Gone Light) in 1987, after which she retired from the literary world for almost two decades. “I simply lived” was the only explanation she gave, quoting poet and essayist Kstutis Nava kas, who said, “Silence is also an excellent form of self-expression.” In 2003, Ka linauskait’s short stories began appearing in the press, and were finally collected in a book, Niekada nežinai (You Never Know) in 2010. Niekada nežinai won both the prestigious Lithuanian Writers’ Union Prize and the Prize of the Lithuanian Literature Institute. Kalinauskait is currently working on her third book.
LÁSZLÓ KRASZNAHORKAI was born in 1954 in Gyula, Hungary. He studied law in Szeged and later Hungarian Language and Literature in Budapest. In 1985, his debut novel Stántangó appeared, which was later adapted by renowned filmaker Béla Tarr, based on Krasznahorkai’s own screenplay. This collaboration between author and director led to three other film adaptations of Krasznahorkai’s novels, as well as A londoni férfi (The Man from London), based on a novel by Georges Simenon. The success of Stántangó established Krasznahorkai as one of the great voices in contemporary Hungarian fiction. A DAAD Fellowship shortly thereafter took him to West Berlin. Krasznahorkai’s novel Az ellenllás melankóliája (1989; The Melancholy of Resistance, 1998) brought him international fame, garnering praise from authors such as Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald. His most recent novel to appear in English translation was Háború és háború (1999; War and War, 2006). He now lives in Berlin with his wife.
ANITA KONKKA was born in 1941 in Helsinki, Finland, where she still lives and works. She is the author of numerous novels, radio plays, essays, and articles, and has worked in many professions, including nurse in a psychiatric hospital, typist, public-relations officer, librarian at the Finnish National Office of Statistics, and editor of a history of Finnish civil engineering. Among her novels are Johanneksen tunnustukset (The Confessions of Johannes, 1995), Rakkaus, kestava kiusaus (Love, The Everlasting Temptation, 1997), and Musta passi (Black Passport, 2001). Works by Anita Konkka have been translated into English, Russian, and Hungarian. She won the 1989 Finnish National Prize for her novel Hullun taivaassaa (1988; A Fool’s Paradise, 2006).
ERIC LAURRENT was born in 1966 in Clermont-Ferrand, France. After finishing his studies in literature, he moved to Paris. Laurrent has published nine novels with Éditions de Minuit, including Coup de foudre (1995), Dehors (Outside, 2000), and Ne pas toucher (2002; Do Not Touch, 2009). His most recent novel, Renaissance italienne (Italian Renaissance), was published in 2008.
ARIAN LEKA was born in 1966 in Durrës, Albania. He studied music at the Jan Kukuzeli Music Academy in Durrës before studying Albanian language and literature in Tirana. He is the founder of POETEKA, Albania’s International Poetry and Literature Festival. Among his works are the poetry collections Anija e Gjumit (The Ship of Sleep, 2000) and Strabizëm (Strabismus, 2004), the novels Veset e të Vdekurve (The Vice of Death, 1997) and Gjarpri i Shtëpsë (The Snake of the House, 2002), and the short story collections Ky vend i qetë ku s’ndodh asgjë (This Quiet Country Where Nothing Happened, 1994) and Shpina e Burrit (The Back of Man, 2004). He has also translated the works of Eugenio Montale, Salvatore Quasimodo, and Italo Calvino into Albanian. Leka has twice received the Prize of the Albanian Writers Union and was a recipient of a Heinrich Böll House fellowship in 2006.
ZURAB LEZHAVA was born in 1960 in Tbilisi, Georgia. After finishing Tbilisi Secondary School Number 126, he started to work in the state-run publishing house. In 1982, he was imprisoned and spent the next sixteen years in jail. He now earns his living carving and selling wooden statues. He has published a novel and two books of short stories, and numerous short stories in various literary magazines. Half of his works were written during his time in jail.
VICTOR MARTINOVICH was born in 1977 in Minsk, Belarus. A graduate of the Belarussian State University’s
school of journalism, Martinovich works as editor of the weekly intellectual broadsheet BelGazeta in Minsk, and is head of the political science department at the European Humanities University in Vilnius. His debut novel (Paranoia) was published in Russia in 2009 to great critical acclaim, despite being banned in his native Belarus.
HILARY MANTEL was born in 1952 in Glossop, England. She is the author of ten novels, including A Place of Greater Safety (1992); The Giant, O’Brien (1998); and Wolf Hall, which won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2009. She is also the author of a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, winner of the 2006 Hawthornden Prize. Hilary Mantel’s reviews and essays appear in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books.
BLAŽE MINEVSKI was born in 1961 in Gevgelija, Macedonia. He has worked as a reporter for the Macedonian daily Nova Makedonija, and currently writes for the magazine Focus. He has published three novels, including, most recently, Nishan (Target, 2007), as well as several volumes of short stories, selections of which have been translated into English and numerous other languages.
NORA NADJARIAN was born in 1966 in Limassol, Cyprus. A poet and short story writer who works primarily in English, she is the author of three collections of poetry and a book of short stories, Ledra Street (2006). Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, and has won prizes or been commended in international competitions, including the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, the Féile Filíochta International Poetry Competition (Ireland) and the Binnacle International Ultra-Short Competition at the University of Maine at Ma chias. Her 2004 poetry collection, Cleft in Twain, was one of the books from the new member states of the European Union recommended in an article appearing in the Guardian that same year. Her work was also included in May Day: Young Literature from the Ten New Member States of the European Union, published by the European Commission. A new book of her short stories is forthcoming from Folded Word (U.S.A.) in 2011.
ÉILÍS NÍ DHUIBHNE was born in 1954 in Dublin, Ireland. Her short story collections include Midwife to the Fairies, The Inland Ice, and The Pale Gold of Alaska. Among her numerous literary awards are The Bisto Book of the Year Award, the Readers’ Association of Ireland Award, the Stewart Parker Award for Drama, the Butler Award for Prose from the Irish American Cultural Institute, and several Oireachtas awards for her novels in Irish. Her novel The Dancers Dancing was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000. Ni Dhuibhne is a member of Aosdana and a Writer Fellow at University College, Dublin, where she teaches in Creative Writing.
ALEK POPOV was born in 1966 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He received his MA in Bulgarian Literature from the University of Sofia. His satirical novel, Missiya London (Mission London, 2001), was based on his impressions as cultural attaché at the Bulgarian Embassy in the United Kingdom. It became one of the most popular Bulgarian books dealing with the transition to a postcommunist society; a film version debuted in 2010. Popov’s second novel, Chernata kutiya (The Black Box), was published to great critical acclaim in 2007. He is a recipient of the Canetti Prize and the Helikon Prize for best book of the year
WILIAM OWEN ROBERTS was born in 1960 in Bangor, North Wales. He attended the University of Wales and studied Welsh literature and theater, then turning to an MA studying television plays, focusing on the work of Dennis Potter. From 1983 to 1984 he was writer-in-residence with Cwmni Cyfri Tri Theatre Company, then worked for five years as a Script Editor at HTV. He became a full-time writer in 1989. He is best known for his novels, but also writes for theater, radio, and television. His first novel, Bingo! (1985), is a reworking of the diaries of Franz Kafka. His second novel, Y Pla (1987) is set in Wales, the Near East, and Europe in the fourteenth century, and was translated into English by Elisabeth Roberts as Pestilence in 1991. Paradwys (Paradise, 2001) is set during the American War of Independence and the French Revolution and deals with the abolition of slavery. Paris Arall (Paris Again), published in 2007, is about the experience of White Russians in exile, following the 1917 Revolution. Roberts’s latest novel is Petrograd (2008), winner of the 2009 Wales Book of the Year Award (Welsh-language) and the ITV Wales People’s Choice Award. He lives in Cardiff with his wife and three daughters.
GORAN SAMARDŽI was born in 1961 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes poetry, prose, and literary criticism, and is one of directors of Buybook, a popular Sarajevo bookstore. In 2004 he won the annual prize of the Bosnian Writer’s Association for his novel Sumski duh (Forest Spirit). Among his other works are Lutke (Dolls, 1990), Otkazano zbog kiše, (Canceled Because of the Rain, 1995), Imeu dva pisma (Between Two Letters, 1996), and Letei Beogra anin (The Flying Belgrademan, 2009).
INGO SCHULZE was born in 1962 in Dresden, Germany. He studied classic philology in Jena and worked in Altenburg as a dramatic arts advisor and editor of a newspaper. He has been living in Berlin since 1993. He was awarded the Aspekte Literature Prize for his first book, 33 Augenblicke des Glücks (1995; 33 Moments of Happiness, 1998), and the Berliner Literature Prize for Simple Storys (1998; Simple Stories, 2000) both of which are available in English translation. The New Yorker has numbered Schulze among the “Six Best European Novelists,” and the Observer described him as one of “21 Authors to Keep an Eye on in The Twenty-first Century.” Ingo Schulze is a member of the Academy of Arts Berlin and the German Academy for Language and Poetry. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages. His most recent novel to be translated into English was New Lives in 2008. Orangen und Engel: Italienische Skizzen (Oranges and Angel: Italian Sketches), where the story in this anthology first appeared, was published in 2010.
MIMA SIMI was born in 1976 in Zadar, Croatia. She graduated from the Zagreb Faculty of Philosophy with a degree in Comparative Literature and English Language and Literature, and she holds an MA in Gender Studies from the Central European University in Budapest. Thus far, she has published a collection of short stories, Pustolovine Glorije Scott (Adventures of Gloria Scott, 2005), and had many of her stories featured in Croatian and international literary magazines, as well as numerous anthologies. She is a member of the editorial team of Sextures: A Virtual Forum and E-journal for Sexualities, Cultures, and Politics, and is on the editorial board of Ekviva, the regional women’s web portal. She has translated several books into Croatian and English and regularly translates fiction and theory. As a journalist and film and cultural critic, she writes for various Croatian and international publications.
OGNJEN SPAHIwas born in 1977 in Podgorica (formerly Titograd), Montenegro, where he studied civil engineering and philosophy. He continues to live there today and works as a journalist and culture editor for the independent daily paper Vijesti. Spahi has published two collections of short stories: Sve to (All That, 2001) and Zimska potraga (Winter Search, 2007). His novel Hansenova djeca (Hansen’s Children, 2004) won him the 2005 Meša Selimovi Prize for the best new novel from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro, and has since become a cult book in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. In 2007, Spahi participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.
DIETER SPERL was born in 1966 in Wolfsberg, Austria. He grew up in Zeltweg, a small town in Styria. Later, he studied language, literature, and philosophy in Graz. For several years he was the editor of the experimental literature magazine perspektive and founder and editor of gegensätze, a theoretical and literary book series. He has worked as a teacher, language coach, curator, and author. He moved to Vienna in 1997, and from 2005 to 2007 he worked for the Wiener Zeitung and ran the literature portion of the art magazine ST/A/R. He is the author of numerous radio plays and two novels: Random Walker (2005), an elaborate journal of films he had watched, from which his piece in this anthology was compiled; and Absichtslos (Unintentional, 2007), a novel in vignettes about Vienna. He is currently Writer in Residence at Bowling Green State University, Ohio.
STEFAN SPRENGER was born 1962 in Zürich, Switzerland. He studied visual art and art
s education in Lucerne and Zürich. He lives and works as an author, artist, and teacher in Schaan, Liechtenstein.
VERENA STEFAN was born in 1947 in Bern, Switzerland, and she lived in Berlin from 1968 to 1975 before immigrating to Canada. In addition to writing fiction and nonfiction, she is a translator and poet. A collection of her early works is available in English as Shedding and Literally Dreaming. She is also the author of Rau, wild & frei (Rough, Wild & Free, 1997), a collection of comparative essays on the figure of the girl in literature. She was co-translator of both The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich and Lesbian Peoples: Materials for a Dictionary by Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. She most recently published the novel Fremdschläfer (Unknown Sleeper, 2007), and she has co-edited with Chaim Vogt a forthcoming anthology of Montreal Jewish lifestories titled Als sei ich von einem andern Stern (As If I were from Another Star, 2011).
GONÇALO M. TAVARES was born in 1970 in Luanda, Angola. He spent his childhood in Aveiro in northern Portugal, and has written several novels, including A Máquina de Joseph Walser (Joseph Walser’s Machine, 2004), Jerusalem (2005; 2009), and Aprender a Rezar na Era da Técnica (2007; Learning to Pray in the Age of Technology, 2011), all of which are available or forthcoming in English translation. He is also the author of criticism, plays, children’s books, and several volumes of short stories. Tavares has been awarded an impressive number of literary prizes in a very short time, including the Saramago Prize in 2005, and the Prêmio Portugal Telecom de Literatura em Língua Portuguesa in 2007. He teaches epistemology at the University of Lisbon.
Best European Fiction 2011 Page 50