"Twelve stories translated in and out of eighteen languages by sixty-one authors"--Page 2 of cover.

Sacrificed aspirations /Tash Aw -- Horribly twisted shoes / John Banville -- A dismemberment reimagined / A.S. Byatt -- Kierkegaard on the writer's art / J.M. Coetzee -- Love in the Vondelpark / Lydia Davis -- An animal in the church / Dave Eggers -- A creature from Kafka / Nathan Englander -- Happenstance in Amsterdam / Jeffrey Eugenides -- Shoes slashed by razors / Francisco Goldman -- The making of a man / Andrew Sean Greer -- Things seen for the first time / Aleksandar Hemon -- An appeal to the public / Sheila Heti -- Lessons beneath the grape arbor / Heidi Julavits -- A mystery in the synagogue / Etgar Keret -- The fox and the earth god / Jonathan & Mara Faye Lethem -- Death in London / Javier Marias -- People from underground / Tom McCarthy -- A battle for a birch tree / David Mitchell -- A short history of Spain / Julie Orringer -- The narrator falls out of his chair / Gary Shteyngart -- A life in Italy / Zadie Smith -- Vila-Matas facing Cabrera / Colm Toibin -- Four seasons, two summers / Vendela Vida.