ABSTRACT This introductory essay confronts the idea of Europe and Europeanness from the standpoint of global literary studies. It makes the case for a pluralistic conception of world literature through a prospective analysis of the literary European semi-periphery. With the aim of overcoming the conflation between world literature and the global anglophone (as much as that of Europe and the West), we draw on previous research on the European semi-periphery and its “small/minor” literatures with three main goals in mind: to better understand the contentious relationship between less-circulated European narratives and world literature; to explore the contested imaginaries of Europe and Europe’s border zones that these fictions produce; and, lastly, to identify a constellation of thematic, generic, formal, and affective concerns that contribute to reimagining Europe through specific exploratory poetics. Through the examination of this framework, the essay critically interrogates and problematizes the idea of Europe from its margins and explores the ways in which narrative form can contribute to contesting unitary ideas around a multilayered and conflicted European literary field.