![]() “… in June 1940, a quarter of the French population was on the run.” Like small pieces of shrapnel they measure the damage, the dead, the wounded, the tortured, the missing … and the immigrants: The book, full of voices, heroes and victims, is pockmarked by numbers. “… different stages of the twentieth century are being lived, or relived …” ![]() We meet aristocrats and taxi drivers, soldiers and students in a patchwork of proud, individual countries where: He takes us with him through cities and cemeteries, along great rivers, and into homes. “… follow, as far as possible, the course of history, in search of the traces it had left behind.”īy ‘being there’ the author is able to layer life and today’s reality over what’s come before. Geert Mak gathered the collection together as he travelled from country to country in search of memories and evidence.Įach section of this rich read was written for the NRC Handelsblad, the newspaper whose idea it was that their journalist should travel through Europe to record what he found in the last year of the millennium. It’s a chance to listen to Europe and to feel its scars. In Europe is a mix of travel writing and historical analysis, marked out with first-hand accounts and contemporary reports. ![]() In Europe, Travels Through the Twentieth Century by Geert Mak (translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett)įirst Published by Atlas in 2004 as In Europaįirst Published in Great Britain in 2007 by Harvill SeckerĮdition pictured above published in 2008 by Vintage In Europe by Geert Mak – a big, brilliant and friendly read. ![]()
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