Great Regulars: Fabulism forms the backbone of European literature,

from the Brothers Grimm all the way through to Angela Carter. But although it has remained a consistently strong strand in post-colonial fiction, it seems to me we've seen less of it in Europe over the last two decades: realism has been the dominant discourse. The first inkling I got that a shift might be occurring was on a rare trip to the cinema last year to see the Coen brothers' meditation on Judaism, A Serious Man. The film opens with a brief vignette set in an unnamed eastern European shtetl, in which a peasant inadvertently invites a man who may or may not be a dybbuk into his house.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Does Téa Obreht's Orange prize signal a return to fabulism?

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