The story in Saturday European Fiction this week – “Slow Walking Course” by Uršuľa Kovalyk – contained the same disturbing and darkly humorous combination of the humdrum every day and the magically surreal that I found so striking in the first story of hers I read – “Mrs. Agnes’s Bathroom.” That story was included in […]
“Of all the people I knew in those days he was the only one who could switch off, sit down and just stay seated, puffing away without – I’m quite sure – a thought in his head. He would just sit there, immersed in emptiness. Not that he had a clue about Buddhism.” From an […]
The Dalkey Archive Press has just published the Review of Contemporary Fiction: The Future of British Fiction. This is the Fall 2012 issue but don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that we now have months and months of cold weather in front of us (at least I hope it doesn’t). As usual, if you want to […]
Marek Bieńczyk has won Poland’s top literary award for Książka twarzy (A Book of the Face). The Nike Literary Award (Nagroda Literacka NIKE) has been in existence since 1997 and has had Olga Tokarczuk, Wiesław Myśliwski, Jerzy Pilch and Czesław Miłosz among previous winners. Speaking of Miłosz this year’s Audience Award went to Andrzej Franaszek […]
I should admit from the outset that I haven’t always liked the short story form. When I first began reading with any dedication I had the impression that novels conjured entire worlds while short stories were content with slices of life. What’s more, the slice-of-life sensibility appeals so directly to verisimilitude that a story about […]
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