Winner of the European Union Prize for Literature. This collection of sixteen stories takes us on an eccentric tour of contemporary existence, in prose rich with Nabokovian detail and barroom humor

Winner of the European Union Prize for Literature. This collection of sixteen stories takes us on an eccentric tour of contemporary existence. A lonely man rants about everything under the sun, including the sun itself. A vampire recounts the history and travails of the Balkans¿ bloodsucking community. A grief-stricken widower leads his son on a frantic search through the night. A husband and his pregnant wife argue, in Raymond Carver-like fashion, over whether Carver¿s stories will have a negative influence on the baby. In prose rich with Nabokovian detail and barroom humor, Spahi¿ paints a portrait of a world so strange, it could only exist in the twenty-first century.

"[Head Full of Joy] presents a corpus of 16 unusual tales featuring episodes from the life of each story's hero. Each story is told by an omniscient narrator or the hero himself, and they paint a picture showing the collision of the outer and inner world of modern man, providing a distinct interpretation of the universal values of life."