A parable from Georgia involving a hundred writers, a train, and a month-long trip across Europe.
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A bevy of mediocre writers are invited to a seminar aboard a specially chartered train, and this novel tracks their progress across Europe: bitter, bickering, and self-absorbed. Aboard this Literature Express is a Georgian author whose love for the wife of his own Polish translator seems as doomed as his hopes for international success; worse still, it seems all the novelists congregated on The Literature Express intend to write their next books about their time on the train . . . Can our Georgian author compete? Is there any hope for contemporary literature, or, barring that, at least his own little love affair? The Literature Express is a riotous parable about the state of literary culture, the European Union, and our own petty ambitions—be they professional or amorous.
"The Literature Express is at its best when embracing the literary cacophony of its setting. The characters and their furious battle to out-do one another professionally gives the book its bleak humor, and a degree of uneasy edge (...) Maya Kisashvili’s translation is utterly elegant and succeeds in conveying outlandish guffaw-worthy humor without ever sounding mannered."–Tweed's Magazine