Word: europeanate
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...biggest problem AB InBev faces is the downward trend in beer consumption in Europe. The company says European drinkers have been gradually switching to wine and spirits in recent years, causing sales of beer to decline sharply. In beer-loving Belgium, the problem has been particularly acute: beer sales plummeted 20% from 2000 to 2008. One reason for this, according to the market-research firm Euromonitor International, is that the Belgian population is aging and thus less likely to go out to bars to drink. And the trend shows little sign of reversing. Fifty years ago, the average Belgian drank...
...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 Bolaņo, Stieg Larsson, Per Petterson - translated authors tend to deliver anemic sales, which makes mainstream American publishers loath to gamble on them. And Bolaņo and Larsson were dead (both prematurely...
With the new anthology Best European Fiction 2010 (Dalkey Archive Press; 421 pages), edited by Chicago-based writer Aleksandar Hemon, our literary world just got wider. Hemon, an award-winning author who was born in Sarajevo and did not begin writing in English until he was in his early 30s, is an excellent guide to the European sensibility. And Best European is an exhilarating read. With stories from 35 nations and regions from Albania to Wales, it's like a Eurail pass that lets you tour a continent's worth of psychological landscapes. Trying to take in all of them...
...writers in Best European seem a more adventurous bunch than their American counterparts. They experiment freely with structure and venture more often down the path of metafiction, debating the direction of a story even as their characters are entangled in it. ("The Basilica in Lyon," by Serbian writer David Albahari, is a mesmerizing dream chase along those lines.) Hemon says this is a reflection partly of his own editorial taste but also of the European publishing environment, which doesn't follow the American blockbuster model. "There's a lot of American fiction on the fringes that is very daring...
...America, but there's also a tradition of openness and interest in other parts of the world." In the book's preface, Zadie Smith writes, "I was educated in a largely Anglo-American library, and it is sometimes dull to stare at the same four walls all day." Best European Fiction puts in 35 new windows. You don't have to love all the views, but it's certainly nice to have them...