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donate Literary perspectives: An introduction
The re-transnationalization of literary criticism
Editorial Eurozine's new series of essays aims to provide an overview of diverse literary landscapes in Europe. [ more ]
Read also A longer version of Carl Henrik Fredriksson's article The re-transnationalization of literary criticism. [ more ]
FLANDERS
Literary perspectives: Flanders
Reality-check
Flanders In the last decade, Flemish fiction has stepped out of the shadow of its Dutch older sister, writes Tom Van Imschoot. One discernable trend is the turn from metafiction towards various forms of realism, be it the regional, the semi-autobiographical or the "virtual". [ more ]
Lithuania
Literary perspectives: Lithuania
Almost normal
Essay The literary field in Lithuania has established itself since independence, despite vastly smaller print runs. Today, a range of literary approaches can be made out, from the social criticism of the middle generation to the more private narratives of the post-Soviet writers. [Hungarian version added] [ more ]
Denmark
Literary perspectives: Denmark
The contemporary literary reservation
Essay Committed, critical writing in Denmark is emerging from its sheltered existence in a literary reservation, in doing so collapsing the boundaries between the literary field and the broader public sphere, writes Andreas Harbsmeier. [Swedish version added] [ more ]
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croatia
Literary perspectives: Croatia
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Essay A new generation of post-feminist writers in Croatia has emerged in the crossover between literature and journalism. Common to much new Croatian writing is the postwar experience, with authors using marginal characters to explore tensions between individual and society. [ more ]
sweden
Literary perspectives: Sweden
Beyond crime fiction, handbags and designer suits
Essay Recent literary debates in Sweden have dwelled, among things, on authors' love lives and penchant for designer handbags. Yet there is more out there if one looks: Hans Koppel's satire of suburban manners, for example, or Magnus Hedlund's explorations of human perception. [Estonian version added] [ more ]
We're like a boat with water up to the gunwales and there are waves breaking over the sides the whole time!
Prose Pär Thörn, one of Sweden's most acclaimed young writers, studied the discussions between the executive managers on the web forum www.ledarna.se ("the executives"). Read the results of his copy-pasting. [ more ]
Depressive European
Prose Chocolate cigarettes, AIDS, and homes for battered wives. Hanna Hallgren conducts a critical, poetic search for European identity. [ more ]
Manual for postmodern childrearing
Prose How would you bring up a child if you took the lessons from postmodernism literally? [Estonian version added] [ more ]
Read also Ida Börjel, "European waistelines"; Andrej Tichy, "The scream of geometry"
Austria
Literary perspectives: Austria
Anything but a "German appendix"
Essay Austrian novelists are still referred to as Germans despite recent critical and commercial success. From the new narrative "miracle" to the darkly humorous "writer's novel", Daniela Strigl finds a contemporary Austrian scene at the top of its game. [Estonian version added]
[ more ]
Estonia
Literary perspectives: Estonia
Waiting for the Great Estonian Novel
Essay While the Great Estonian Novel has yet to be written, the range of fiction in Estonia is wide enough to serve as an indicator of the post-communist country's hopes and fears, anxieties and obsessions. writes the editor of "Vikerkaar". [Russian version added] [ more ]
Read also Jaan Kaplinski's 1992 parable of writers in transition: From harem to brothel. [ more ]
The visitor
Prose One evening, the director of a zoological museum receives a visitor with a very unusual interest in the exhibits... [ more ]
A brave woman
Prose Cynical and naive mentalities mix in an absurd short story by Estonia's most popular young author. [ more ]
Ukraine
Literary perspectives: Ukraine
Longing for the novel
Essay In Ukraine, the demand for engagement with the recent past has produced a series of novels that are better described as autobiographies. But, asks Timofiy Havryliv, is autobiography equal to the task? [Estonian version added] [ more ]
Northern Ireland
Literary perspectives: Northern Ireland
Shaking the hand of history
Essay While the Northern Irish literary tradition is closely bound up with the experience of sectarian violence, contemporary Northern Irish writing defies the assumption that "the Troubles" are all there is to the country's literature. [ more ]
Read also Alan Gillis's poem The Ulster way. [ more ]
Slovenia
Literary perspectives: Slovenia
A hollowed-out generation
Essay Slovenian novelists are developing original responses to the experience of post-communist society, writes Ales Steger. While male novelists take a hyper-realist, social-critical approach, their female counterparts are creating fictions only loosely connected to contemporary time and space. [ more ]
Read also Protuberances: poetry by Ales Steger. [ more ]
Read also The first chapter of Fuzine blues, a novel by Andrej E. Skubic. [ more ]
The Netherlands
Literary perspectives: The Netherlands
"Profound Holland" and the new Dutch
Essay While the work of novelists Jan Siebelink and Arnon Grunberg reflect the new need for security in the Netherlands, a parallel strand of contemporary Dutch literature sidesteps such concerns: writers with migrant backgrounds are introducing new styles into the Dutch literary repertoire. [Hungarian version added] [ more ]
Read also Hella S. Haasse's short story, A stone jar from Arelate (in French) [ more ]
Read also The first chapter of Jan Siebelink's novel Kneeling on a bed of violets (in German) [ more ]
Read also Excerpts from Arnon Grunberg's novels: The asylum seeker and Tirza (in Dutch) [ more ]
Hungary
Read also György Spiró in interview: A witness of the first century. [ more ]
Satire Literary EU standards? A satire by György Spiró. [ more ]
The body of the text
Corporeal writing in Péter Nádas's "Parallel Stories"
Essay Parallel Stories, the new novel by Péter Nádas, interweaves four sets of narratives driven by the twin motors of politics and eroticism. But Parallel Stories is more than the sum of its plot lines. [ more ]
Read also Peter Nadas on Hungary '56: A headless revolution. [ more ]
A box of photos
(Captions on the back)
fiction A man looks at photographs of his youth in pre-war Budapest. Above all he remembers his love, the seductive Jolika. Yet memory is tainted by sorrow as it becomes clear that this is a story of loss and displacement. [ more ]
Why does anyone translate?
On translation The English translator of Imre Kertész talks about the lack of literary translations in the UK and US, and assesses past, present, and forthcoming efforts to bring Hungarian literary fiction to the English-speaking market. [ more ]
Imre Kertész and his time
Not Jewish. Not Hungarian. Not anti-German enough.
Essay The "perfect normality" of his fiction placed Imre Kertész on the sidelines of Hungarian literature during socialism, and still causes dislike, says a leading Hungarian playwright. [ more ]
Read also Ilma Rakusa's introduction to Bartis's novel. [ more ]
Zehuze
Literature A Hungarian-Israeli mother addresses her daughter in Europe in a letter she never sends. In a fictional monologue, András Forgách explores the private suffering and political ambivalence of a life in postwar Israel. One of Hungary's most interesting authors for the first time in English translation. [ more ]
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More literature in Eurozine
Why study literature?
Essay Literary studies in Estonia has taken a crash course in twentieth-century theory. With mixed results, says the editor of cultural journal Vikerkaar. Now literary critics should stop baffling one another with jargon and aim at a wider readership. [ more ]
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, (anti)modernist
Russia For Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, modernism in Russia foretold "the most destructive revolution of the twentieth century". Exploring Solzhenitsyn's (dis)engagement with European modernism, Richard Tempest argues he employed modernist means to achieve anti-modernist ends. [ more ]
"Water is more dangerous than the rise of Islam..."
Interview with Dutch writer Margriet de Moor
In conversation Although often using female heroines in her novels, Margriet de Moor finds pigeonholing literature into male and female categories is a pointless exercise. "The social issue of women suffering under a male dominance – no, I don't find it terribly interesting." [ more ]
The presence of African literature
The evolution of literary criticism, publishing, and readership
Essay Africa’s growing role in western European culture is reflected in the increasing interest in its literature. Soon Kourouma will be shelved between Kafka and Kundera. [ more ]
Pornographers in black
Essay Is the female pornographic eye dangerous? Or is it just another male fantasy? Anna Friman on what happens when women write about sex. An award-winning essay on posh porn. [ more ]
The scream of geometry
(modified excerpts)
Literature "How can these cities, villages, and their people exist? How can they stand there selling tomatoes and speaking their language and drying their laundry without considering the infinite number of other places where someone else is standing, selling tomatoes or potatoes and speaking their language and drying laundry?" [Estonian version added] [ more ]
European waistlines
Literature Swedish poet Ida Börjel confronts us with our favourite and most insulting national prejudices about ourselves and our European neighbours. But does she confirm them? [Estonian version added] [ more ]
Anthology of contemporary Hebrew poetry VII
Poetry Helicon editor Amir Or's latest addition to the Hebrew poetry anthology presented in Eurozine. [ more ]
A heavy prelude to chaos
Aspects of literary anti-Americanism in the interwar years
Essay Interwar European literature represented the US as the quintessence of unbridled modernity that prefigured the destruction of Europe. Jesper Gulddal surveys the uncharted territory of literary anti-Americanism. [ more ]
A lesson in Dylan appreciation
Interview When Christopher Ricks, author of critical works on Milton, Keats, and Eliot, turned his attention to Bob Dylan, critics grumbled that he could talk one into believing that even a phone book is poetry. Now that Dylan has won the Pulitzer Prize, they may have to reconsider. [ more ]
Breakfast with brontosaurus
An interview with Harold Bloom
In conversation "Partly from encountering wisdom, I have to say I have no wisdom." American literary critic Harold Bloom talks to Latvian journal Rigas Laiks about his twenty-ninth book, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? [ more ]
Is it a sin to travel?
Itinerant women in post-Soviet narrative
Russia Three contemporary Russian novels undermine the stigmatization of Russian women as prostitutes and destabilize the patriotic discourse that forbids women's travel. [ more ]
Twenty-two years later
A second reading of Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"
Literary criticism Twenty-two years after it was first published in Czech, Jiri Travnicek discovers a new appreciation for the narration, characterization, and above all wisdom of Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". [ more ]
On the privileges of the literary critic
Literary criticism Literary lunches aside, what are the critic's privileges? According to Jörg Magenau, it's all about accumulating others' experiences, about "being in the world", about avoiding the media's barrage of facts. And about having lots of books... [ more ]
Against love
Seeking the literary traces of the Natascha Kampusch affair
Radical critique "The birth of love out of the spirit of totalitarianism expressed itself in exemplary manner in the Kampusch abduction story. A person is shut in, all the others shut out – that is the ideological core of romantic love." [ more ]
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