Two of the most enchanting books I read over the last few months are Herta Muller's The Passport and Dimitri Verhulst's Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill. They are very different stories, the first a political metaphor, the second a study of human nature and love. But they seem to come from a European tradition that incorporates a kind of fairytale element with the everyday: the fabulist tradition that reaches back to Aesop, and forward to the likes of Saramago and Calvino.

Australian fiction, on the other hand, seems mostly to be grounded strictly in the realist tradition. This passage from Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright exemplifies a style of writing tethered to the real that can be found in writiing from Patrick White to Tim Winton.

'...he could see the plains stretching west, broken only by rare clumps of the hardy saltbush that managed to draw sustenance even here where the earth had been innocent of any trace of moisture for months...somewhere not far out in the shimmering haze was the state border, marked by a broken fence, and that further out in the heat was the silent centre of Australia, the Dead Heart.'

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule: David Malouf's An Imaginary Life is steeped in mythology, but is also steeped in the European landscape and tradition. Some of Peter Carey's novels come close to this blending of the real and magical, but the two Australian novels that stick most clearly in my mind are by Aboriginal writer's: Kim Scott's Benang and Alexis Wright's Carpentaria. Perhaps indigenous culture more readily embraces a blurring of boundaries between the real and the imagined. Perhaps the Australian writers of European descent find the bright light of the Australia sun discourages the fabulist imagination to bloom; unlike the deep, dark forests that feed the European imagination.

The other element I find in these European stories, and I'm not sure if they are not part of the same thing, is the use of the everyman character to explore the universal; like the traditional morality tale, the characters are central, but not particularly distinguishable. Unlike the way the individual is so distinct and discrete in our stories: down to the colour of their eyes and the personal tics and quirks that define them as unique.

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this - and I'm sure there are thorough and fascinating academic studies about the differences between 'old' and 'new' world literatures, that would make sense of these differences I am only just hinting at - but, it has set me thinking about styles of writing and the pleasures of reading, and, I for one, find a deep, dark pleasure in leaving the strictly fathomable behind.

And if you are interested in European literature, there is a great anthology edited by Aleksander Hemon that should hit the shelves this month: Best European Fiction 2010 that aims to promote emerging writers and those who have been so far neglected by English-language publishers.