Slovenes, (the people who form ) a nation of two million in the heart of Europe, achieved independence for the first time in their long history with the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991. Having settled in the Alps in the sixth century AD, they succeeded in preserving their language, identity and culture largely through poetry and fiction: their greatest national hero is not a general but a romantic poet. With the arrival of independent statehood and membership of the European Union and NATO, Slovenian literature has been freed of its function as the guardian of national identity and is now allowed to explore the realm of literary imagination without the former burdens of attendant duties. While not ignoring their great literary tradition of the past centuries, contemporary Slovenian authors no longer concern themselves predominantly with national issues; their writing is personal, inventive and open outward, even cosmopolitan, yet without losing its specific Central European flavor. The thirteen stories by thirteen leading Slovenian authors selected for this anthology have all it takes to make the reader turn the pages: style, suspense, irony, dark secrets, intellectual game playing, emotional charge, human warmth, and more.