Europa Challenge 2011: My Dinner with Europa

Looking at my original list of books for the Europa Challenge 2011, I realized I had a theme going. In fact, the titles read like a night having friends over to dinner– or maybe even a date night. I’ve included the descriptions from the Europa Catalog, in case you’re interested!

• Cooking with Fernet Branca (James Hamilton-Paterson): A delicious comedy of manners nominated for the 2004 MAN Booker Prize.
• The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (Alina Bronsky): Told with sly humor and an anthropologist’s eye for detail, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is the story of three unforgettable women whose destinies are tangled up in a family dynamic that is at turns hilarious and tragic.
• The Proof of the Honey (Salwa Al Neimi): A bestseller throughout the Arab world, a tribute to sex, eroticism, language and liberty, The Proof of the Honey is a superb celebration of female pleasure.
• Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (Amara Lakhous): A shrewd mix of social satire and murder mystery.

I absolutely loved this idea, so I went through the catalog to see if I could find any other “courses” for my “dinner with Europa,” and I came up with these fantastic titles:

• The Woman with the Bouquet (Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt): An exceptional collection by one of Europe’s most beloved authors.
• Bone China (Roma Tearne): A beautifully crafted story of hope and survival set in Sri Lanka and England that will appeal to all readers of White Teeth and The Inheritance of Loss.
• The Goodbye Kiss (Massimo Carlotto): After years on the run, he's back and willing to do anything to claw his way into respectable society.

Of course, they looked so interesting that I now want to read them all. So while I’ve committed to being a Europa Ami (4 books), I think it’s possible I may wind up a Europa Haver (7 books) when it’s all said and done!

Feel free to join me for dinner with Europa -- everyone's invited!