#RivetingReviews June 2026. Introduction by West Camel

Welcome to June’s #RivetingReviews. This quarter we have reviews of more than twenty titles for you to feast on and perhaps take inspiration from for your summer reading. I think I’m right in saying this qualifies as one of the largest set of reviews we’ve ever published – if not the largest. So I thought I’d take a moment to discuss ELNet’s approach to these reviews and what it allows us to do as reviewers and editors. 

Rosie Goldsmith set up the #RivetingReviews shortly after founding the Network – in response to the dearth of coverage of translated-literature reviews in the mainstream media. In the years that have followed, this dearth has only grown worse – as the number of literary reviews in general has declined, so translated literature has seen available review space shrink. 

Over more than a decade now, ELNet has taken up this slack and provided a dedicated platform for reviews of European literature in translation. But we’re not a mainstream outlet, and in recent years we’ve run the Network and the reviews without any funding. This means that we generally don’t commission reviews in the traditional way. Yes, publishers get in touch with us, and we gratefully received press releases, proofs and final copies of the wealth of European literature that’s being published in the English-speaking world, which provides a great selection of work for us to review ourselves, and draw on for our quarterly releases.  

Our main source of reviews, however, is through submissions. We have a large roster of regular reviewers and ask them each quarter to propose books that they’d like to review. We also call for submissions through our newsletter, these RRs introductions, and through our website. 

The result is our review coverage doesn’t look like anyone else’s, and this quarter’s selection is the perfect example. Yes, we do have some of the latest publications on our list: I have reviewed The Family, Sara Mesa’s powerful new novel, in Katie Whittemore’s wonderful translation – out from Peirene in July. And Cory Anderson has taken on Hélène Bessette’s polyphonic subversion of the crime novel in Twenty Minutes of Silence, which Fitzcarraldo published last week. But we also switch back to April with Rosie Goldsmith’s review of the devilish rumba of The Villain’s Dance by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, published by And Other Stories – Rosie having interviewed Fiston on stage at the European Writers’ Festival in May. 

In general, we try to keep things relatively current – we tell our reviewers to pick books that have been published in English within the past twelve months. But sometimes, someone suggests something exciting: Jennifer Sarha proposed M: Son of the Century, Antonio Scurati’s novelisation of the life of Mussolini. It originally came out in English in 2022, but a new edition in 2025 to mark the release of the TV adaptation was enough for me, and Jennifer intimated when she submitted her review that it was one of the best books she’s read in recent years. So a flexing of the guidelines was very much worth it. 

I flexed the rules even further when Morelle Smith approached me at the EWF, suggesting she review a book published back in 2023 by Austrian PEN: Slovenian Poetry Today. She had me at ‘tri-lingual translation’ – these poems are offered in Slovenian, German and English.

Our regular roster of reviewers includes several crime-fiction afficionados, which means we generally have good representation of the noir European countries produce such wonderful examples of, this month covering Croatia, Denmark and Iceland with Max Easterman’s review of Jurica Pavičiċ’s Mother of Sorrows, Barry Forshaw on Søren Sveistrup’s Hide and Seek, and Paul Burke on Katrín Júliusdóttir’s Stop Dead and Georges Simenon’s Letter to My Judge.

One of the most important features of our reviews is their length. We generally ask for 500 words, and most reviewers keep to that extent, or a little above, but if a piece is well argued, if the quotes are juicy and the passion is strong, we give the reviewers space to expound – a virtue not all online magazines and review platforms take advantage of, and something you’ll rarely see in the print media these days, apart from for a select few titles. 

Lastly in this non-exhaustive list of the advantages of ELNet’s reviews approach: diversity. Our reviewers are passionate about translated literature – many are translators themselves or work in this corner of the publishing industry – and so we find ourselves offered reviews of titles that simply don’t get on many other publications’ radar. This quarter, for example, we have Steve Komarnyckyj’s review of Hutsulka, a collection of English-language poetry written by Ukrainian American Nicole Yurcaba, who is of Hutsul/Lemko origin, two tribes from the Ukrainian Carpathians; and we have Darcy Hurford covering Greenlandic author Sørine Steenholdt’s short-story collection – both books from small presses (River Paw and Norvik, respectively) who simply don’t have the resources to push for coverage elsewhere. 

On the subject of small publishers issuing work that might never find a home with the big guys, this quarter we celebrate the launch of Sideways Press, the new project from our managing editor – translator and poet Anna Blasiak. The first title from the press is a book-length poem, Psalm to Saint Sabina by Radosław Wiśniewski, translated by Anna and with photography by her colleague at Sideways, Lisa Kalloo. We cover the book here in a coruscating (and editorially independent!) review from Wioletta Greg. 

I think I have demonstrated why ELNet’s approach to the Riveting Reviews is a successful one and how it offers a unique platform for the promotion of books that might not otherwise find exposure and for the kinds of reviews other publications don’t have the resources or inclination to publish. I know that I haven’t covered all the books reviewed in this set, but I’m seeing that as a positive – we have such a surfeit, I can’t include them all in my introduction. Suffice to say that we’re ever thankful to our roster of regular reviewers, and to the publishers that pitch European titles to us. 

If you’re passionate about European literature, have a title you’d like to review for us, or would like to join our list of reviewers, please get in touch via contact@eurolitnetwork.com. Our next set of reviews will be released in September. 

Enjoy this wealth of writing about writing and have a wonderful literary summer! Until September…

—West Camel