Best European Fiction 2011

by Aleksandar Hemon

  LUCIAN DAN TEODOROVICI was born in 1975 in Rdui, Romania. He is the coordinator of the Romanian publisher Polirom’s “Ego Prose” series, and senior editor of the Suplimentul de cultur weekly. Between 2002 and 2006, he was editor-in-chief at Polirom, and he has contributed prose, drama, and articles to various cultural magazines in Romania and abroad, including Suplimentul de cultur, Timpul, Dilema veche, Observator cultural, Familia, ArtPanorama, Hyperion, Discobolul, Orizont, Evenimentul zilei, Cotidianul, Wienzeille (Vienna), and Au sud de l’Est (Paris). He has written screenplays for several film projects, including an adaptation of his own 2002 novel Circul nostru v prezint (2002; Our Circus Presents, 2009). His books include Cu puin timp înaintea coborîrii extrateretrilor printre noi (Shortly Before the Extraterrestrials Descended Among Us, 1999), and Lumea vzut printr-o gaur de mrimea unei igri marijuana (The World Seen through a Hole the Width of a Spliff, 2000).

  OLGA TOKARCZUK was born in 1962 in Sulechów, Poland. After finishing her psychology degree at the University of Warsaw, she initially practiced as a therapist. Since the publication of her first book in 1989—a collection of poems entitled Miasta w lustrach (Cities in Mirrors)—Tokarczuk has published nine volumes of fiction, including stories, novellas, and novels, and one book-length essay (on Boleslaw Prus’s novel The Doll). In English her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and her novel Dom dzienny, dom nocny (1998; House of Day, House of Night, 2002) was shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 1998, Tokarczuk moved to a small village near the Czech border and now divides her time between there and Wroclaw. For her novel Bieguni (The Runners), she received Poland’s top literary award, the Nike Prize, in 2008. Her most recent novel to appear in English translation is Prawiek i inne czasy (1996; Primeval and Other Times, 2010).

  ERSAN ÜLDES was born in 1973 in Manisa, Turkey. He is an avid student of literary theory and writes with a bold, biting humor, pushing the limits of the novel form as we know it. His debut, Yerli Film (Domestic Film), received The nklap Bookstore Novel Award in 1999. His second novel, Aldrlan Çocuklar Örgütü (Organization of Aborted Children), was published in 2004. He has written book reviews for various supplements and literary magazines. His latest novel, Zafiyet Ku ram (The Theory of Infirmity), from which the story in this anthology was excerpted, was published in 2007.

  MANON UPHOFF was born in 1962 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. She is the award-winning author of four novels, including Gemis (Loss, 1997) and De bastaard (The Bastard Son, 2004), three novellas, and a host of short stories that are considered among the best in contemporary Dutch literature. She is an editor of the literary journal De Revisor. Her latest novel, De spelers (The Players), appeared in October 2009.

  ENRIQUE VILA-MATAS was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1948. One of Spain’s preeminent novelists, he has been awarded the Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the Prix Médicis étranger. He is the author of twenty works of fiction, including Paris no se acaba nunca (Paris Never Ends, 2003) and Dublinesca (Dublinesque, 2010), as well as several books of nonfiction. His novels Bartleby y compañía (2000; Bartleby & Co., 2004) and El mal de Montano (2002; Montano’s Malady, 2007) are available in English translation.

  TOOMAS VINT was born in 1944 in Tallinn, Estonia, where he still lives today with his wife Aili. His studies in biology at the Tartu State University were interrupted by a military draft; during his years in the Soviet Navy, he began to write poetry and prose. Upon his return to Estonia, Vint left the university and worked for Estonian television, and was one of the publishers of the underground literary magazine Hees. Among his many novels are Kojamehe naine (The Janitor’s Wife, 1995), Lõppematu maastik (An Unending Landscape, 1997), and Topeltvalguses (In Double Light, 2005). Since 1971, Vint has earned his living as a freelance writer and painter. He is renowned for his paintings of metaphysical and conceptual landscapes, having produced twenty-four solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions in many countries. Vint’s novels and short stories have been nominated for several literary awards; he has won the Friedebert Tuglas Short Story Award twice, as well as the Estonian Prose Award.

  Translator Biographies

  DIL AYDOAN’s English translations of Turkish short stories have been published in various books and magazines. She has co-edited, with Amy Spangler, a special issue of Transcript Review, focusing on fiction from Turkey. She has participated in the Cunda International Workshop for Translators of Turkish Literature since 2008.

  JRA AVIŽIENIS is a Lecturer in the Writing Program at Boston University. She has translated widely from Lithuanian.

  ALISTAIR IAN BLYTH translates from Romanian. His published translations include Little Fingers by Filip Florian, An Intellectual History of Cannibalism by Ctlin Avramescu, and Our Circus Presents by Lucian Dan Teodorovici.

  NATALIA BUKIA-PETERS is a translator, interpreter, and teacher of Georgian and Russian. She studied at the Tbilisi State Institute of Foreign Languages before moving to New Zealand in 1992 and then to Cornwall in 1994. She is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Linguists and translates a variety of literary, technical, and legal works both from and into English.

  CHRISTOPHER BURAWA is a poet and translator. He has received a 2006 Witter Bynner Translation Residency, a 2007 Literature Fellowship for Translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a 2008 American-Scandinavian Foundation Creative Writing Fellowship. He is the Director of the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.

  GWEN DAVIES has published numerous translations of Welsh literature, including Martha, Jack and Shanco by Caryl Lewis. Working mainly as a fiction editor, she is the founder and editor-publisher of Alcemi (www.alcemi.eu) and editor of the forthcoming collection, Sing Sorrow Sorrow: Dark and Chilling Tales. She grew up in a Welsh-speaking family in West Yorkshire and now lives in western Wales.

  VICTORIA FIELD has published two collections of poetry; the latter, Many Waters, was based on a year-long residency at Truro Cathedral. She has co-edited three books on therapeutic writing, most recently Writing Routes. She is an Associate Artist at Hall for Cornwall, who have produced two of her plays.

  WILL FIRTH was born in 1965 in Newcastle, Australia. He studied German and Slavic languages in Canberra, Zagreb, and Moscow. Since 1991 he has been living in Berlin, Germany, where he works as a freelance translator of literature and the humanities. He translates from Russian, Macedonian, and all variants of Serbo-Croatian.

  MARGITA GAILITIS was born in Riga, Latvia. In childhood, she immigrated with her mother and two sisters to Canada. In 1998 she returned to Latvia to work on a Canadian International Development Agency-sponsored project translating Latvian laws into English. Her poetry has been published in periodicals in Canada and the U.S. and she is the recipient of both Ontario Arts and Canada Council Awards.

  SAM GARRETT is an American who currently divides his time between Amsterdam and the French Pyrenees. As well as work by Frank Westerman, he has translated books by Karel Glastra van Loon, Arnon Grunberg, Tim Krabbé, Lieve Joris, Geert Mak, and Nanne Tepper, among others. He was awarded the Vondel Translation Prize in 2003 and 2009.

  ELIZABETH HARRIS is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Dakota. She is currently translating Marco Candida’s Il diario dei sogni and Giulio Mozzi’s Questo e’ il giardino. Her translations of Candida and Mozzi appeared recently in the Literary Review, Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, and Best European Fiction 2010.

  A. D. HAUN has worked as a librarian, researcher, translator, editor, and English instructor, as well as a volunteer worker with nongovernmental organizations in Germany, England, Croatia, Netherlands, Russia, and South Korea. She has published translations from eight languages including Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, and Korean.

  CELIA HAWKESWORTH is emerita Senior Lecturer in Serbian and Croatian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London. She has published numerous articles and several books on
Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian literature. Her many translations include Dubravka Ugresic’s The Culture of Lies, winner of the Heldt Prize for Translation in 1999; Ugresic’s Lend Me Your Character, published by Dalkey Archive Press, and Ivo Zanic’s Flag on the Mountain.

  MARK KANAK is a writer and translator who divides his time between Chicago and Leipzig. His translation of Peter Pessl’s Aquamarine appeared in 2008, and his translations have appeared in journals throughout the world. A collection of his poetry in German, abstürze, was recently published by Frohliche Wohnzimmer Verlag in Vienna.

  SEÁN KINSELLA is a full-time translator and is currently completing his translation of a novel by Stig Sæterbakken for Dalkey Archive Press. He holds a MPhil from Trinity College, Dublin in Literary Translation, and resides in Norway with his wife and two children.

  KRISTINA KOVACHEVA is a Bulgarian native who lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the American University of Paris, she translates between Bulgarian, French, and English.

  VIJA KOSTOFF is a linguist, language teacher, writer, and editor. She has collaborated with Margita Gailitis in translating the novels, short stories, plays, film scripts, and poetry of many of Latvia’s major writers. Born in Latvia, she now resides in Niagara on Lake Ontario, Canada.

  ANTONIA LLOYD-JONES’s translations from Polish include novels by Pawel Huelle (whose The Last Supper won the Found in Translation Award 2008) and Olga Tokarczuk (whose House of Day, House of Night was shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award), short stories by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, and nonfiction by Ryszard Kapuciski and Wojciech Tochman.

  DUSTIN LOVETT is currently a Fulbright scholar in Austria, conducting research on the cultural aspects of literary translation reception at the University of Vienna. His work as a translator has previously appeared in Best European Fiction 2010.

  SYLVIA MAIZELL studied Russian Literature at the University of Chicago, in Moscow, and in Saint Petersburg, and has taught Russian. For the past decade she has worked as a translator from Russian, including stories by Vladimir Ma kanin, Aleksandr Kabakov, Victor Martinovich, Andrei Gelasimov, Emil Draitser, Boris Khazanov, and Dina Rubina.

  RHETT MCNEIL is currently finishing a PhD dissertation on Machado de Assis and Jorge Luis Borges at Penn State University. He has translated Machado de Assis and is currently translating António Lobo Antunes, Gonçalo M. Tavares, and A. G. Porta.

  CHRISTOPHER MOSELEY teaches at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College, London. He came to Britain from Australia and studied Finland and the Baltic countries. While working as a journalist and translator at the BBC, he completed an MPhil on the Livonian language of Latvia. A freelance translator and editor, he is the author of Colloquial Estonian and co-author of Colloquial Latvian for Routledge. He has co-edited the Routledge Atlas of the World’s Languages, edited their Encyclopedia of the World’s Endangered Languages, and completed the third edition of an atlas of the world’s languages in danger of disappearing for UNESCO. He translates into English from Estonian, Latvian, Finnish, and Swedish.

  ANDREW OAKLAND has recently translated texts from the Czech, including Michal Ajvaz’s Golden Age and Radka Denemarkova’s Money From Hitler. He is currently working on novels by Martin Reiner and Martin Fahrner and a new biography of Franz Kafka by Josef Cermak.

  ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS is the author of When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness and The Ground, a forthcoming collection of poems. His translations from Catalan have appeared in the Review of Contemporary Fiction and Best European Fiction 2010. His poems and essays have appeared in venues such as the Kenyon Review, New Republic, and the New Yorker. Phillips graduated from Swarthmore College and received his PhD from Brown University. He has taught at Harvard and Columbia and is currently Associate Professor of English at SUNY Stony Brook, where he also directs the Poetry Center. He lives in Greenwich Village and Barcelona.

  URSULA MEANY SCOTT is a literary translator based in Dublin and working from French and Spanish. Her translation of Claude Ollier’s novel, Wert and the Life without End, is due to be published in 2011. She holds an MPhil in literary translation with distinction from Trinity College, Dublin and was awarded a literary translation fellowship by Dalkey Archive Press in 2009.

  K. E. SEMMEL is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in the Ontario Review, the Washington Post, Aufgabe, Redivider, Hayden’s Ferry Review, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. He has translated Danish authors Pia Tafdrup, Jytte Borberg, and Simon Fruelund, among others. His translation of Norwegian crime novelist Karin Fossum’s next book will be published in 2011.

  SARA “PËRPARIM” SMITH has studied at Duke and Oxford Universities and translates from the Albanian.

  AMY SPANGLER, a native of Ohio, has lived in Istanbul, Turkey, since 1999. Co-owner of the literary agency AnatoliaLit (www.anatolialit.com), Spangler is the translator of Asli Erdogan’s The City in Crimson Cloak (Soft Skull, 2007) and co-editor and co-translator of Istanbul Noir (Akashic Books, 2008).

  GEORGE SZIRTES was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England as a refugee. He was brought up in London and studied Fine Art in London and Leeds. For his poetry, he has won the Faber Memorial prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He has also worked extensively as a translator of poems, novels, plays, and essays and has won various prizes and awards in this sphere. His own work has been translated into numerous languages. He lives near Norwich with his wife.

  LISE WEIL received an MA and PhD in Comparative Literature at Brown University. She teaches in Goddard College’s Individualized MA program and lives in Montreal, Quebec. She recently published Beyond Recall, a collection of the last writings of local painter and writer Mary Meigs, and is at work on a memoir, In Search of Pure Lust.

  ANDREW WACHTEL is the Bertha and Max Dressler Professor of the Humanities at Northwestern University. He was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003, and is an acclaimed translator of contemporary Russian, Slovenian, and Serbo-Croatian poetry and prose, as well as editor of Northwestern University Press’s “Writings from an Unbound Europe” series.

  JOHN E. WOODS is the translator of over forty books from German to English. Among the authors he has translated are Thomas Mann, Arno Schmidt, Patrick Süskind, Christoph Ransmayr, and Ingo Schulze. He has twice been awarded the PEN Translation Prize, and has received the Schlegel-Tieck Prize and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize. He lives in Berlin.

  Acknowledgments

  Publication of Best European Fiction 2011 was made possible by primary support from Arts Council England, with generous additional support from the following cultural agencies and embassies:

  The Arts Council (Ireland)

  Books from Lithuania

  Communauté française de Belgique—Promotion des letters

  Cultural Services of the French Embassy

  Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru—Welsh Books Council

  Danish Arts Council Committee for Literature

  DGLB—Direcção Geral do Livro e das Bibliotecas, Portugal

  Embassy of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the United States of America

  Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria, London

  Embassy of Spain, Washington, D.C.

  Estonian Literature Centre

  Finnish Literature Exchange (FILI)

  The Goethe-Institut Chicago

  Hungarian Book Foundation

  Icelandic Literature Fund

  Institut Ramon Llull, Catalan Language and Culture

  Latvian Literature Centre

  The Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia:

  Program in Support of Georgian Books and Literature

  Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Macedonia

  Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic

  Nederlands Letterenfonds: The Dutch Foundation for Literature

  NORLA: Norwegian Literature Abroad, Fiction & Nonfiction

  The Polish Cultural Institute in London

&nbs
p; Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council

  Romanian Cultural Institute

  Slovenian Book Agency (JAK)

  NORLA: Norwegian Literature Abroad, Fiction & Nonfiction, is a government-funded, non-commercial foundation which promotes Norwegian literature to other countries. Foreign publishers of Norwegian books may apply for a translation subsidy. More than 2,000 books by Norwegian authors have been published in more than 50 languages with grants from NORLA since 1978.