Perhaps the first question raised by the Dalkey Archives Press‘ newest collection, Best European Fiction 2014, is: what is European fiction? What are the characteristics that define it against, say, American fiction? In such a varied continent, ranging from Portugal to Russia, Iceland to Greece, and a continent with so turbulent a history of conflict and competition, can there be a unified literary tradition or identifiable collective identity?
This is the continent of barbarian tribes subdued, for a time, by the Romans and thereafter full of competing kingdoms, principalities and different ethnic groups all struggling for supremacy. Other powers have risen as hegemonies across chunks of Europe (Charlemagne, Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, the USSR) but never has this disparate collection of peoples been truly united.
Alongside the competition-driven imperialism of Western Europe, there’s the ethnic diversity and conflict of the continent’s eastern half, caught as it is between the West on one side, then Russia and the Middle East on the other. Places like Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, the former Yugoslav republics, which have been fought over and divided, rather than dividing and conquering like their more westerly and northern neighbours.
It’s quite ambitious of the Dalkey Archives Press, then, to present a collection of European fiction that can represent these diverse nations and peoples. Is it possible that this anthology can (or should?) represent a continent-wide wave, a movement, of what defines ‘European’ literature and storytelling?
