Forget about the Great American Novel

Where is the Great European Novel?

From a piece in the Guardian...

In his introduction to the forthcoming anthology of short stories, European Fiction, 2011, Colum McCann wonders why, when there is so much hype and hysteria over the search for the Great American Novel (file under: Franzen furore), there is not the same fervid interest in the idea of a Great European Novel.

On these shores, it's easy to see why. We have a dearth of literature in translation compared with the countries of mainland Europe. If it wasn't for adventurous publishers like Portobello Books, the Dalkey Archive Press, and Serpent's Tail, we wouldn't have any at all. Most of my favourite writers are from overseas, and yet I can read, at most, only one or two novels in English from their oeuvre, whereas in Germany or Poland, I would be able to pick up the whole lot. In my local Waterstone's in Manchester, the Literature in Translation section has recently been replaced by a few shelves of greetings cards and stationery. Ok, it's an unwelcome sign of the times, because publishers don't want to take the risk on 'hard sell' foreign fiction, but how else are we to discover a sense of ourselves within a European context? How else to find our place in the concept of Europa which is currently informing much of the cultured debate across the continent, especially among EU accession countries? Or should we simply pull up anchor, settle down in front of our screens, and let these benighted isles float towards the US?