Writing from the Lands Between
Central European writers created some of the most distinctive prose and poetry of the 20th centuries. Kafka, Sienkowicz, Kundera, Andrić, Musil, and others masterfully employed irony, gallows humor and the anti-heroic “view from below” in their examinations of modern bureaucracy, ill-treatment by historical forces and the weight of memory. This list provides suggestions for readings from their 21st-century literary heirs (loosely conceived) – writers born in a mutilated world that demands both praise and lament.
