Best European Fiction 2011

With authors ranging from the familiar (Hilary Mantel) to the obscure (Macedonia's Blaze Minevski) to the internationally acclaimed but underappreciated in the U.S.A. (Spain's Enrique Vila-Matas; Hungary's László Krasznahorkai; Poland's Olga Tokarczuk), the second volume of this lauded series makes good on the first's promise. Zurab Lezhava's "Sex for Fridge" is the madcap story of a Georgian woman who tries to trade her body for a discount on a run-down refrigerator. Iulian Ciocan's "Auntie Frosea" takes as its depressing protagonist an impoverished Moldovan housewife whose only knowledge of the world outside her village comes from the beamed-in Brazilian soap opera she's addicted to. There's also plenty of Euro-surrealism: Olga Tokarczuk's haunting "The Ugliest Woman in the World" tells the story of a man who marries and has kids with a rather unbecoming woman, while László Krasznahorkai's "The Bill" is a nine-page, one-sentence meditation on the zone between male desire and possession. With stories from Montenegro, Cyprus, and even tiny Liechtenstein aside works from Turkey, Estonia, and most of Western Europe, this edition packs both a stylistic punch and a satisfying range. (Nov.)