The Circle: A Brussels Anthology

Open this book, and you will enter a world refracted in a prism of thirty-four polished surfaces. A gem, cut in the technocratic diamond district, emitting multifarious literature through its many faces. Approaching a perfect circle with each new facet. Some reflect the wistful melancholy of the Brussels drizzle, some tear open the sky with a bolt of genius that will have you groping for your sunglasses. A brain drain of thirty-four emerging and prize-winning authors, itinerant and settled, shares and sharpens its largely expat outpourings of human love and beastly bombings, reassuring community and bewildering exile. The private explodes in public, the petty corrupts the grand, the funny elbows the dire—in the heart of the old world, lives and stories converge and drift apart. This collection portrays our troubled and exciting times through short story, poem, script and novel excerpt of both seasoned pros and promising hacks. Whether brutally marooned on the damp flatlands, or cosily embedded in red-brick ale houses, their dreams and nightmares shine from this beloved, accursed, ramshackle Europe of ours. Come inside. Andreas Bergsten Jeanie Keogh Colin Walsh Junko Oikawa Dimitris Politis SR Harris Aisling Henrard Mimi Kunz Mauricio Ruiz Joost Hiltermann Cynthia Huijgens Shyam Sunder Gopalakrishnan Antoinette Naomi Reddick Richard Boland Sarah Strange Ross Noble Andrea Rees Nicholas Parrott CS Begu Lida Papasokrati David Ellard Alex Dampney Océan Smets Martin Jones Claire Davenport Genevieve Shapiro Klavs Skovsholm TD Arkenberg Paul Speight Barbara Mariani Jay Harold Patrick ten Brink Hamed Mobasser Kevin Dwyer