In his magnificent new work of fiction, William T. Vollmann turns his eye to the warring authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the twentieth century.

Composed of a series of intertwined stories, Europe Central examines a vast array of characters, ranging from generals to martyrs, officers to poets, traitors to artists and musicians. Some are famous, like the poet Anna Akhmatova and the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, some are infamous or unknown, like the renegade Russian General Vlasov or Kurt Gerstein, a young German who joins the SS to reveal its darkest secrets and try to halt its crimes.

A meticulously researched and powerfully written work of staggering scope, Europe Central deals with the moral decisions made by people in the most testing of times and offers a bold and mesmerizing perspective on human actions during wartime.

'...the sheer brazen scope of the thing commands respect and admiration.'
The Daily Telegraph

'Highly serious, extremely ambitious.' The Times

'Europe Central is an enormous accomplishment, but really only offers a starting-point to understanding this author's oeuvre... he has a scope and ambition far beyond the ability of most authors.' The Independent

'(Vollman's) willingness to go against the preferred social realism of our day, enabled by his publisher’s willingness to allow him to unfold his Wagnerian epics at full length, make him a hero of our time.' The Washington Post

'...he has turned to the historical novel and made it his own, fashioning a work which is cinematic in scope, epic in ambition and continuously engaging, shows that he is one of the most important and fascinating writers of our time.'
The Times Literary Supplement

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Read an excerpt from Europe Central

Visit William T. Vollman's unofficial website at www.williamtvollmann.com

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