Best European fiction 2016 - Nathaniel Davis

Since 2010, this anthology has been an essential resource for readers, critics, and publishers interested in contemporary European literature. In this, the seventh installment of the series, Best European Fiction 2016 continues its commitment to uncovering the best prose writing happening on the continentfrom Azerbaijan to Denmark, from Portugal to the Ukrainefeaturing work by established authors such as Josef Winkler, Christian Gailly, and Joo de Melo, as well as up-and-coming writers like Krisztina Tth, Justyna Bargielska, Veronika Simoniti, and Bessora.

The volume is also a forum for the best translators working today, featuring new translations by Lawrence Venuti, Vera Rich, Amaia Gabantxo, Adrian Nathan West, and many more. Also featuring a provocative prefatory essay written by John Fosse, Best European Fiction 2016 is another essential report on the state of global literature in the twenty-first century.

Called the new Ibsen in the German press, and heralded throughout Western Europe, Jon Fosse is one of contemporary Norwegian literature's most important writers. In 2000, his novel Melancholy won the Melsom Prize, and Fosse was awarded a lifetime stipend from the Norwegian government for his future literary efforts. In 2015, Ladbrokes listed him as having 10/1 odds to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.



Nathaniel Davis is an assistant editor at Dalkey Archive Press. He is also a translator and holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Pennsylvania.

"[W]e can be thankful to have so many talented new voices to discover." ?Library Journal

"The anthology Best European Fiction 2016 combines 29 different writers from across the continent, here translated into English. Concerned largely with politics or literature, the standout story is Veronika Simoniti's pertinent "A House of Paper," in which a translator is convinced her body is shrinking as some sort of penance for her lifetime of 'counterfeiting […] in another language.'" ?Ruth Gilligan, The Irish Independent