Open this book, and you will enter a world refracted in a prism of thirty-four polished surfaces. A gem, cut in the technocratic diamond district, emitting multifarious literature through its many faces. Approaching a perfect circle with each new facet. Some reflect the wistful melancholy of the Brussels drizzle, some tear open the sky with a bolt of genius that will have you groping for your sunglasses. A brain drain of thirty-four emerging and prize-winning authors, itinerant and settled, shares and sharpens its largely expat outpourings of human love and beastly bombings, reassuring community and bewildering exile. The private explodes in public, the petty corrupts the grand, the funny elbows the dire—in the heart of the old world, lives and stories converge and drift apart. This collection portrays our troubled and exciting times through short story, poem, script and novel excerpt of both seasoned pros and promising hacks. Whether brutally marooned on the damp flatlands, or cosily embedded in red-brick ale houses, their dreams and nightmares shine from this beloved, accursed, ramshackle Europe of ours. Come inside.
Authors:
Andreas Bergsten
Jeanie Keogh
Colin Walsh
Junko Oikawa
Dimitris Politis
SR Harris
Aisling Henrard
Mimi Kunz
Mauricio Ruiz
Joost Hiltermann
Cynthia Huijgens
Shyam Sunder Gopalakrishnan
Antoinette Naomi Reddick
Richard Boland
Sarah Strange
Ross Noble
Andrea Rees
Nicholas Parrott
CS Begu
Lida Papasokrati
David Ellard
Alex Dampney
Océan Smets
Martin Jones
Claire Davenport
Genevieve Shapiro
Klavs Skovsholm
TD Arkenberg
Paul Speight
Barbara Mariani
Jay Harold
Patrick ten Brink
Hamed Mobasser
Kevin Dwyer