In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century - Hardcover

Mak, Geert

4.35

5,143 ratings by Goodreads

9781843432265: In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1843432269 ISBN 13: 9781843432265

Publisher: Harvill Secker, 2007

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Geert Mak spent the year 1999 criss-crossing the continent, tracing the history of Europe from Verdun to Berlin, Saint Petersburg to Auschwitz, Kiev to Srebrenica. He set off in search of evidence and witnesses, looking to define the condition of Europe at the verge of a new millennium. The result is mesmerising: Mak's rare double talent as a sharp-eyed journalist and a hugely imaginative historian makes "In Europe" a dazzling account of that journey, full of diaries, newspaper reports and memoirs, and the voices of prominent figures and unknown players; from the grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II to Adrinana Warno in Poland, with her holiday job at the gates of the camp at Birkenau. But Mak is above all an observer. He describes what he sees at places that have become Europe's well-springs of memory, where history is written into the landscape. At Ypres, he hears the blast of munitions from the Great War that are still detonated there twice a day. In Warsaw, he finds the point where the tram rails that led to the Jewish ghetto come to a dead end in a city park. And in an abandoned creche near Chernobyl, where tiny pairs of shoes still stand in neat rows, he is transported back to the moment time stood still in the dying days of the Soviet Union. Mak combines the larger story of twentieth-century Europe with details that suddenly give it a face, a taste and a smell. His unique approach makes the reader an eyewitness to his own half-forgotten past, full of unknown peculiarities, sudden insights and touching encounters. "In Europe" is a masterpiece; it reads like the epic novel of Europe's most extraordinary century.

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Review:

'a formidable achievement' -- Jan Morris,The Times

'(Mak's) artful interleaving of personal stories with epic events is a constant reminder of the epic scale of human history'
-- The New Yorker

'Fascinating, informative, sometimes exhilarating, often
painful...I thoroughly recommend his book' -- The Literary Review

'In Europe....is a compassionate exposure of a world full of
terror, hope, disaster and refinement.' -- Sunday Express

'It's impossible not to get drawn into this book.'
-- Sunday Telegraph

'Mak is a truly cosmopolitan chronicler of shame and
self-deceptions' -- David Goldblatt, Independent

'Mr Mak tells this part of the story vividly and in great, gory
detail'
-- The Economist

'The pace rarely slackens and every page sparkles with insight.' -- The Herald

800 pages were too few... Geert Mak's book is a quite brilliant
concept ... A breathtaking work
-- Sue Baker & Publishing News

A thrilling voyage through 20th-century Europe which combines
people and places, history and geography, in a compellingly original
fashion. -- Piers Brendon & Bookseller