Suffering the hangover from decades of totalitarian rule, Eastern Europe since 1989 has been a crossroads of political upheaval, cowboy commerce, old hatreds, and new licentiousness: in other words, fertile ground for a new literature. In this unique and timely anthology, twelve of today's best young writers prove the point in exploring one of the most fractious, mercurial, maladjusted, and misunderstood corners of the globe. Drug-addled New Russians preaching the gospel of high finance on Nevsky Prospekt; a UNESCO chief's pressing need for a Parisian blowtorch in Sniper's Alley in Sarajevo; the romantic entanglements and divided loyalties of an alluring Czech intelligence officer caught up in the Velvet Revolution; a diplomat's son on a hedonistic spree in a Central Asian republic–these are the subjects of Wild East, a collection of passionate, raucous stories about the bohemians, danger junkies, and thrill-seekers reveling in the cultural, social, political, and sexual renaissance that followed the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
