Read Around Europe Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Europe.
Best books from Europe (2666)
281.
My Family and Other Enemies by Mary Novakovich EN
CroatiaDescription:
Travel journalist Mary Novakovich explores her family's history in Lika in her native Croatia, recalling childhood visits and frequent trips over the years. Part travelogue, part memoir, it is also an exploration of identity for people with more than one ethnicity.
282.
Adios, Cowboy by Olja Savičević EN
Description:
A gritty, breakneck debut novel by a popular Croatian writer of the country's "lost generation." Dada's life is at a standstill in Zagreb--she's sleeping with a married man, working a dead-end job, and even the parties have started to feel exhausting. So when her sister calls her back home to help with their aging mother, she doesn't hesitate to leave the city behind. But she arrives to find her mother hoarding pills, her sister chain-smoking, her long-dead father's shoes still lined up on the steps, and the cowboy posters of her younger brother Daniel (who threw himself under a train four yea... continue
283.
Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi EN
Description:
“Csikszentmihalyi arrives at an insight that many of us can intuitively grasp, despite our insistent (and culturally supported) denial of this truth. That is, it is not what happens to us that determines our happiness, but the manner in which we make sense of that reality. . . . The manner in which Csikszentmihalyi integrates research on consciousness, personal psychology and spirituality is illuminating.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The bestselling classic that holds the key to unlocking meaning, creativity, peak performance, and true happiness. Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihal... continue
284.
A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism by Slavenka Drakulić EN
Description:
A wry, cutting deconstruction of the Communist empire by one of Eastern Europe's exceptional authors. Called "a perceptive and amusing social critic, with a wonderful eye for detail" by The Washington Post, Slavenka Drakulic-a native of Croatia-has emerged as one of the most popular and respected critics of Communism to come out of the former Eastern Bloc. In A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism, she offers a eight-part exploration of Communism by way of an unusual cast of narrators, each from a different country, who reflect on the fall of Communism. Together they constitute an Orwel... continue
285.
Dark Mother Earth by Kristijan Novak EN
Description:
An amnesiac writer's life of lies and false memories reaches a breaking point in this stunning English-language debut from an award-winning Croatian author. As a novelist, Matija makes things up for a living. Not yet thirty, he's written two well-received books. It's his third that is as big a failure as his private life. Unable to confine his fabrications to fiction, he's been abandoned by his girlfriend over his lies. But all Matija has is invention. Especially when it comes to his childhood and the death of his father. Whatever happened to Matija as a young boy, he can't remember. He feels ... continue
286.
The Hotel Tito : A Novel by Ivana Bodrožić EN
Description:
Winner of the Prix Ulysse for best debut novel in France Winner in Croatia and the Balkan region of the Kočićevo Pero Award, the Josip and Ivan Kozarac Award, and the Kiklop Award for the best work of fiction When the Croatian War of Independence breaks out in her hometown of Vukovar in the summer of 1991 she is nine years old, nestled within the embrace of family with her father, mother, and older brother. She is sent to a seaside vacation to be far from the hostilities. Meanwhile, her father has disappeared while fighting with the Croatian forces. By the time she returns at summer’s end ever... continue
287.
Split : A Novel by Alida Bremer EN
Description:
Nazis, spies, romance, and murder collide in prewar eastern Europe in a mesmerizing historical novel by the award-winning author of Oliva's Garden. It's 1936. The seaside-resort village of Split on the Adriatic coast bustles. The tourist spots are booming, passenger steamers dot the harbor, and Jewish émigrés have found tenuous refuge from persecution. But as war in Europe looms, Split is also a nest of spies, fascists, and smugglers--and now, a locale suspiciously scouted by a German Reich film crew. Then one summer morning it becomes the scene of a murder investigation when a corpse is found... continue
288.
The Ministry of Pain : A Novel by Dubravka Ugresic EN
Description:
Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the "Ministry." Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their "Yugonostalgia" in essays about their personal experiences during their homeland's cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanja's act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class—and pulls he... continue
289.
Atrapa a la liebre by Lana Bastašic ES
Description:
Sara camina por St. Stephen’s Gardens, uno de los lugares más bellos de Dublín, su nuevo hogar.
Suena su celular, y escucha una voz surgida de los ecos de los tiempos, de la lejana penumbra de Bosnia: ¡Lejla! La urge: “Tienes que venir por mí enseguida. Tengo que ir a Viena”. Ante la sorpresa, reparos y confusión de Sara, Lejla pronuncia las palabras mágicas: “Sara, Armin está en Viena.”. Y Sara ya no duda: inmediatamente compra un pasaje a Zagreb.
Sara y Lejla atraviesan la bruma de Bosnia, y mientras recorren la ... continue
290.
Café Europa Revisited : How to Survive Post-Communism by Slavenka Drakulić EN
Description:
"Drakulić’s composite portrait provides a clear-eyed look at European values, and what they really amount to." —The New Yorker An evocative and timely collection of essays that paints a portrait of Eastern Europe thirty years after the end of communism. An immigrant with a parrot in Stockholm, a photo of a girl in Lviv, a sculpture of Alexander the Great in Skopje, a memorial ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet led army invasion of Prague: these are a few glimpses of life in Eastern Europe today. Three decades after the Velvet Revolution, Slavenka Drakulic, the author of Cafe Europ... continue