The pieces collected in Lend Me Your Character—the novella “Steffie Cvek in the Jaws of Life” and a collection of short stories entitled Life Is a Fairy Tale—solidify Dubravka Ugresic’s reputation as one of Eastern Europe’s most playful and inventive writers. From the story of Steffie Cvek‚ a harassed and vulnerable typist whose life is shaped entirely by clichés as she searches relentlessly for an elusive romantic love in a narrative punctuated by threadbare advice from women’s magazines and constructed like a sewing pattern‚ to “The Kharms Case‚” one of Ugresic’s funniest stories ever about the strained relationship between a persistent translator and an unresponsive publisher‚ the pieces in this collection are always smart and endlessly entertaining.