A new anthology brings the best of Continental writing to American shores.
Try this: Name five contemporary European writers, not counting Irish or British. If you're having trouble, there's a good reason you probably haven't encountered many. Translations of foreign-language works make up a mere 3% to 5% of the books published in the U.S. annually, and that includes new editions of classics like Anna Karenina . Except for a few recent breakouts Roberto Bolaño, Stieg Larsson, Per Petterson translated authors tend to deliver anemic sales, which makes mainstream American publishers loath to gamble on them. And Bolaño and Larsson were dead (both prematurely, at the age of 50) by the...
