The Fool
Darran Anderson‘s The Fool – poems on death, madness, drowning Chinese writers, irradiated scientists and Siamese twins – is now available on-line for free. Background: The Tarot of Marseilles was first created in northern Italy in the 15th century. After centuries of obscurity, it became an intregal part of the esoteric, and diabolical, system of […]
Dreams R Us
“The real American dream is to become Europe. Such dreams never come true.” Many books, both American and European, have been read since, informed by this maxim, and opening the second anthology in the series put out by Dalkey Archive, I was subconsciously looking for signs of “Europeanness” that would imply these stories could only have been written this side of the Atlantic. While the jury is still out, the insightful foreword by Colum McCann concludes with the suggestion that “Europe is now a dreamhouse of America, andmaybe even more ‘American’ than the U.S. itself.” This is but one way of reading the collection that presents examples of writing so varied you can never be sure where you are.
Anna Aslanyan reviews Best European Fiction 2011.