Best European Fiction 2018 brings together some of the most innovative writers working in Europe today. Whether they are established novelists such as György Spíró (Captivity), Lídia Jorge (The Painter of Birds), and Amanda Michalopoulou (Why I Killed My Best Friend), or up-and-coming young writers such as Thomas Morris, Maartje Wortel, and Hugh Fulham-McQuillan, every one of them expands our sense of what fiction can be. Although not a themed anthology, certain motifs and obsessions crop up again and again in this year's harvest of Europe's best. Narratives of grief, madness, dystopia, and animal absurdity predominate. In one story, a chameleon escapes from a Werner Herzog film; in another, a man sprouts a second phallus. A young boy contemplates his life as a one-eyed pirate, and a homeless pig navigates its way through a strange city ruled by robots. Representing thirty countries from Iceland to Estonia, Best European Fiction 2018 is fresh proof that, though Europe's political life may splutter and splinter, its literary imagination is alive and well.