Best European Fiction 2013
John Banville
Language: English
Pages: 463
ISBN: 1564787923
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
2013 may be the best year yet for Best European Fiction. The inimitable John Banville joins the list of distinguished preface writers for Aleksandar Hemon's series, and A. S. Byatt represents England among a luminous cast of European contributors. Fans of the series will find everything they've grown to love, while new readers will discover what they've been missing!
handsomely for any help they were given. As soon as he got this message, Pirpo began to dance: he had a good feeling about this new job. A day and a half later, when he went to Lourdes and learned more details, he not only danced, he skipped and sang. If he could, he would have leapt into the air and flown. In the dingy hotel at which they were staying in the holy city, he set out the details to Chanberlán: “Do you know what they call this old man who wants to cross into Spain? Le Roi du
he will get out of jail. As though nothing had happened, he’ll stroll along to the first bar for a double brandy, he’ll knock it back, maybe pinch the waitress’s behind, or tell some drunk that he’d done time just because he humped some traitor’s mother. That his beloved country had punished an innocent man; that it was he, in fact, who was the victim and not that stinking old whore who could have given him a nasty disease. But there we are! Everyone gets what he deserves. He’ll go to prison,
jacket pocket and gave it to me. It’s black. With palm trees. And a couple in evening dress, dancing. You can make out a bungalow behind them. Slim and elegant, they dance away the bottomless tropical night. He in a tuxedo, she in a white cocktail dress. He with one hand on her back, which arches alluringly, the hand placed precisely there, in the arching small of it. She with a hand on one of his shoulders, broad in the tailor-made jacket. A waiter holding a tray is about to cross the bungalow’s
mouse-people, trees blossoming gaily, cloud-light birds flying in the sky. My arm twitches. “It is the world’s most beautiful picture. I created it.” I speak slowly, for clarity. He does not always understand me if I get upset, my skill is to be quick and accurate. I step closer, perhaps the sun is bothering him again. “You don’t know how to create! Even babies can draw better.” He grabs the picture from my hands, dropping it, torn, on the floor. The sun strikes my sensors, too, as I bend down
simple that it takes your breath away. She had seen it somewhere, put the scarlet border round it, fixed it to the wall all by herself, and it is so handy and saves so much space. I don’t recall in our previous life, or lives, rather, ever seeing her with a screwdriver or hammer in her hand. Now she is the owner of pliers, chisels, files, a range of screws and keys, measuring tapes and insulating tapes, keeping them all in a professional-looking toolbox, proudly setting them out and recounting