Anthologies

Edited by acclaimed Bosnian novelist and MacArthur Genius Award-winner Hemon, the Best European Fiction series offers a window into what's happening in literary scenes throughout Europe.

Absence and disappearance provide recurring themes in these 10 stories assembled from the BBC International Short Story Award competition: the abandonment of family members, estranged wives and errant husbands, the loss of a childhood friend and computer games mentor, and the convenient vanishing of whatever we deem disposable. Written by English-speaking writers from around the world-including Australia, the Balkans, Ireland, North America, and South Africa-this compilation shows the extraordinary diversity and richness of the short story as a truly global form while also honoring the 2012 London Olympics. Contributors include the winner of the BBC International Short Story Award, Miroslav Penkov; runner-up Henrietta Rose-Innes; and Adam Ross, Carrie Tiffany, Chris Womersley, Deborah Levy, Julian Gough, Krys Lee, Lucy Caldwell, and M. J. Hyland.

'The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.' - William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the deaths of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, And Other Stories and Hay Festival have selected twelve contemporary international authors to each write an original and previously unpublished story as their tribute to these giants of world literature. In order to celebrate the international influence of both writers and offer us new and intriguing perspectives on them, six English-speaking authors have taken inspiration from Cervantes and his work, while six Spanish-language authors have written stories inspired by Shakespeare. An introduction by Salman Rushdie explores the liberating legacy of Cervantes and Shakespeare for contemporary fiction. The authors are Ben Okri, Deborah Levy, Kamila Shamsie, Yuri Herrera, Marcos Giralt Torrente, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Vicente Molina Foix, Soledad Puértolas, Hisham Matar, Nell Leyshon, Rhidian Brook and Valeria Luiselli. An introduction by Salman Rushdie explores the liberating legacy of Cervantes and Shakespeare for contemporary fiction.

Fiction and essays inspired by Paris from more than 70 Anglophone writers -- A MoveableFeast for the twenty-first century. "When good Americans die, they go to Paris", wrote the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in 1894. The French capital has always radiated an unmatched cultural, political and intellectual brilliance in the anglophone imagination, maintaining its status as the modern cosmopolitan city par excellence through the twentieth century to today. We'll Never Have Paris explores this enduring fascination with this myth of a bohemian and literary Paris (that of the Lost Generation, Joyce, Beckett and Shakespeare and Company) which also happens to be a largely anglophone construct -- one which the Eurostar and Brexit only seem to have exacerbated in recent years. Edited by Andrew Gallix, this collection brings together many of the most talented and adventurous writers from the UK, Ireland, USA, Australia and New Zealand to explore this theme through short stories, essays and poetry, in order to build up a captivating portrait of Paris as viewed by English speakers today -- A Moveable Feast for the twenty-first century. We'll Never Have Paris includes contributions from seventy-nine authors, including Tom McCarthy, Will Self, Brian Dillon, Joanna Walsh, Eley Williams, Max Porter, Sophie Mackintosh and Lauren Elkin.

New work from Tommy Orange, Anne Carson, Louise Erdrich, and others propels this tribute to love from Freeman’s, “a powerful force in the literary world” ( Los Angeles Times ). In a time of contentiousness and flagrant abuse, it often feels as if our world is run on hate. Invective. Cruelty and sadism. But is it possible the greatest and most powerful force is love? In the newest issue of this acclaimed series, Freeman’s: Love asks this question, bringing together literary heavyweights like Tommy Orange, Anne Carson, Louise Erdrich, and Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk alongside emerging writers such as Gunnhild Øyehaug and Semezdin Mehmedinovic. Mehmedinovic contributes a breathtaking book-length essay on the aftermath of his wife’s stroke, describing how the two reassembled their lives outside their home country of Bosnia. Richard Russo’s charming and painful “Good People” introduces us to two sets of married professors who have been together for decades, and for whom love still exists, but between the wrong pair. Haruki Murakami tells the tale of a one-night stand that feels like a dying sun. Together, the pieces comprise a stunning exploration of the complexities of love, tracing it from its earliest stirrings, to the forbidden places where it emerges against reason, to loss so deep it changes the color of perception. In a time when we need it the most, this issue promises what only love can bring: a solace of complexity and warmth. “The anthology packs an emotional wallop from the start.” — Shelf Awareness