Elsewhere: Stories from Small Town Europe (Comma Translation)

Mehmet Zaman Salioglu

ISBN 10: 1905583133 / ISBN 13: 9781905583133

Published by Comma Press, 2008

Seller Inventory # GOR014734153

Synopsis:

What do we mean by small town? How has this innocuous term one up from village, a couple down from city, come to function as a pejorative? Pressed to describe what the phrase small town conjures up, we'd be hard pushed to say anything positive: closed-minded; petty; provincial; parochial. On a broad European canvas, however, the rich traditions of short story writing challenge these preconceptions. The stories collected here are neither narrow-minded nor petty, nor do the minds of their protagonists contract to fit their environment. In Germany, a house-husband is slowly sent over the edge by his over-achieving neighbours. In the town of Odda in Norway, a middle-aged Morrissey fan has a matter of hours to find a girlfriend so his ailing mother can die in peace. It s the small gestures a white lie, the turning of a blind eye, a small kindness or a secret kept that allow the characters of these communities to survive, to breathe easily within the seemingly tight strictures life there can impose. It s how we do things round here...

About the Author: Olga Tokarczuk is the author of several books of prose, including Prawiek i inne czasy (1996) and Dom dzienny, dom nocny (1998). A number of her books have been translated from Polish to other languages, including French, German, Czech, Danish, Dutch, and Norwegian. Olga Tokarczuk lives in Nowa Ruda, Poland. This is the first time her work has been translated into English. Gyrdir Eliasson is one of Iceland's Leading contemporary writers. His style has been described as highly personal; a unique combination of lyrical fantasy and imaginative realism. He was nominated for the Nordic Council Literary Prize for Gula husid (The Yellow House), a collection of short stories published in 2000. He has also received the Icelandic Literary Prize and The Halldor Laxness Literary Prize. Jean Sprackland s first collection of poetry, Tattoos for Mothers Day (Spike) was shortlisted for the Forward First Book Award and her second, Hard Water (Cape) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2003 T.S. Eliot Award. She lives in Southport. She has since contributed a sequence of linked short stories to Comma's Ellipsis series.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Elsewhere: Stories from Small Town Europe (...
Publisher: Comma Press
Publication Date: 2008
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Fine