Angels Beneath the Surface: A Selection of Contemporary Slovene Writing

Slovenia is one of the world’s most literate, and literary, countries. With a per capita publishing rate of more that three times that of the United States, the country has a long and illustrious literary history. Angels Beneath the Surface represents a wide array of voices and writing styles among the country’s current ‘younger generation’ of writers. With an introduction by Beletrina Press editor Mitja Cander (Beletrina is considered to be Slovenia’s leading literary presses for emerging writers) and cultural critic Ales Car that provides an outstanding overview of Slovene literary history and contextualizes the stories within the collection, Angels Beneath the Surface offers a wide array of writing styles and original voices that cover a vast territory of subject matter.Included among the thirteen writers in the anthology are some of the country’s leading social critics, editors, publishers, and essayists. The authors mine their culture for often startling insights in stories that range from wicked variations on fairy tales to dour romances to skewerings of the bureaucratic state. The collection is refreshing in its diversity of styles and thematic concerns and will be a great addition for anyone interested in literary fiction, literature in translation, and Central European literatures.