This is one of the best anthologies - as an anthology - I have ever read. It now has 43 tales in it, all of them exciting, all beautifully translated, ranging from the Austro-Hungarian decadence to modern science fiction. It also has an excellent introduction, describing the particular qualities of Austrian - as opposed to German, or any other - literatures. The Austro-Hungarian empire before the second world war was elegant, frivolous, possessed by baroque images of death and dissolution, full of witty sidelong comments on ossified political structures, in the form of bureaucracies and castles. Both of these were explored by Kafka, who is central to this anthology, in that there are three tales by him, and his rediscovery after the Nazi period has been a dominant and clearly benign influence on modern Austrian writing.
