Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

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whopping works from elsewhere in Europe. Top Hungarian
playwright György Spiró storms into the limelight with his
magisterial novel, Captivity, excerpted here. This nearly-
900-page bildungsroman about first-century Jewish life has
just been named one of the 10 Best fiction books of 2015
by The Wall Street Journal – we spoke with him about this
work (13 minutes). Bulgarian poet Georgi Gospodinov’s
The Physics of Sorrow, in English by Angela Rodel, has just
been longlisted by PEN as one of the best translations of
2015. We interviewed him about this tantalizing sort-of
novel, and its reflections on present-day Bulgaria, (35
minutes). Russian Sergei Lebedev delivers amesmerizing,
intensely lyrical foray into injustices buried in the past of the
Soviet countryside. Italian transplant Catherine McNamara
bring us a tale of disappearance in the Italian Dolomites.
We get a first-ever glimpse in English of a seminal work of
Danish experimental fiction from the strange and masterful
Per Højholt – this novel’s ostensible subject is a flock of
ambulating ears, capable solely of self-hearing, which grew
from a silence that briefly fell across Europe in 1915 – and
this issue is rounded out by poetry from Ukrainian Vasyl
Lozynsky.
Wow. Can there be a better holiday than this? Enjoy!
By the way, you can learn more
in a separate section at the end of this issue.
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editor’s welcome (cont’d)