Zero Hours on the Boulevard Tales of Independence and Belonging

Kelinu waits for his telegram from the Queen of England. He has a few years to go but he’ll wait. His niece thinks he’s a fool. He was in the service of the Queen only a year, all those years ago. Times have changed. In these stories people strive to make a place, a living, a life with meaning in a new country or sense in an old one: from zero hour contracts in Bridgend and Munich to scraping a living as a mermaid on the streets of Barcelona. A woman tends a beautiful garden she knows will be taken away from her while another sends her child to a school concert dressed as a dinosaur. A man attends one more demonstration while another explains to his daughter where he is really from. In this diverse and fascinating anthology, writers from across Europe embark on a journey of independence and belonging.

Alexandra Büchler is Director of Literature Across Frontiers (LAF). A translator and editor of numerous publications, she was born in Prague and started her career as cultural manager with the Australia Council for the Arts before moving to the UK where she co-founded LAF in 2000 and launched it with support of the then Culture Programme of the European Union in 2001. She served on the board of the advocacy network Culture Action Europe and of the UK Translators’ Association, and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the European Civil Society Platform for Multilingualism and on the Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee of Wales PEN Cymru. She oversees LAF’s research and the publication of its reports. Her interest lies in the area literature and translation policies, EU external cultural relations, and the role of civil society in international cultural activities and cultural policy development. Alison studied creative writing at the Open University and took the opportunity to begin an internship with Parthian via the OU. With a background in research, writing, and marketing in the charity sector, she was interested in a change of direction and, after a lifetime of obsessive reading, it seemed that publishing could be the way to go. She is the editor of the "Parthian Baltic" series. Alison lives in Carmarthen with her son and dogs and in her spare time sews, writes, walks the beaches and forests of West Wales and spends hours reading in the bath.