In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century

"This is a fantastic book. It’s by a Dutch journalist and writer who spent a whole year — 1999 — travelling around Europe. He weaves together the history of Europe with modern cultural observations. It’s fascinating, both in terms of how Europe’s history remains alive today, but also how much has changed. So he starts off in Amsterdam, which is his native city, and then goes off to Paris, which is where the World Fair of 1900 captured the excitement of the new century. At the end of his journey, he ends up in Sarajevo, which played a crucial role in 1914, but at the time, in 1999, had just come out of the terrible Bosnian war. Yes he’s partly describing and then talking to people who are there now. He’s almost like an artist, in the sense that he just paints pictures and he brings the past alive through people speaking now, which is a rare gift. It’s like the best of documentary television. It’s hard to do justice to it. Again, if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. It’s another doorstopper: this book is 876 pages. If your readers are inspired by my selection they’re going to have a whole summer’s reading. Or maybe even several summers’ reading…"