Read Around Europe Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Europe.
Best books from Europe (1623)
581.
Embers by Sandor Marai EN
HungaryDescription:
Originally published in 1942 and now rediscovered to international acclaim, this taut and exquisitely structured novel by the Hungarian master Sandor Marai conjures the melancholy glamour of a decaying empire and the disillusioned wisdom of its last heirs. In a secluded woodland castle an old General prepares to receive a rare visitor, a man who was once his closest friend but who he has not seen in forty-one years. Over the ensuing hours host and guest will fight a duel of words and silences, accusations and evasions. They will exhume the memory of their friendship and that of the General’s b... continue
582.
Fatelessness : A Novel by Imre Kertész EN
Description:
At the age of 14 Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn’t particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, “You are no Jew.” In the lowest circle of the Holocaust, Georg remains an outsider. The genius of Imre Kertesz’s unblinking novel lies in its refusal to mitigate the strangeness of its events, not least of which is Georg’s dogmatic insistence on making sense of what he wi... continue
583.
Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy EN
Description:
A haunting Hungarian novel, and a vision of hell unlike any previously imagined.
584.
George Frideric Handel by Paul Henry Lang EN
Description:
Exceptionally full, detailed study of the man, his music and times. Childhood, music training, years in London; analysis of Messiah and other works; much more. Introduction. Includes 35 illustrations.
585.
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy EN
Description:
The first and most successful in the Baroness’s series of books that feature Percy Blakeney, who leads a double life as an English fop and a swashbuckling rescuer of aristocrats, The Scarlet Pimpernel was the blueprint for what became known as the masked-avenger genre. As Anne Perry writes in her Introduction, the novel “has almost reached its first centenary, and it is as vivid and appealing as ever because the plotting is perfect. It is a classic example of how to construct, pace, and conclude a plot. . . . To rise on the crest of laughter without capsizing, to survive being written, rewritt... continue
586.
The Bronze Eagle by Emmuska Orczy EN
Description:
The perfect calm of an early spring dawn lies over headland and sea—hardly a ripple stirs the blue cheek of the bay. The softness of departing night lies upon the bosom of the Mediterranean like the dew upon the heart of a flower.A silent dawn.Veils of transparent greys and purples and mauves still conceal the distant horizon. Breathless calm rests upon the water and that awed hush which at times descends upon Nature herself when the finger of Destiny marks an eventful hour.But now the grey and the purple veils beyond the headland are lifted one by one; the midst of dawn rises upwards like the... continue
590.
The Nursery : A Novel by Szilvia Molnar EN
Description:
A debut novel from a remarkable new talent: a visceral and revelatory portrait of a woman struggling with maternal fear and its looming madness, showing how difficult and fragile those postpartum days can be, and how vital love is to pull anyone out from the dark There is the before and the after. Withering in the maternal prison of her apartment, a new mother finds herself spiraling into a state of complete disaffection. As a translator, she is usually happy to spend her days as the invisible interpreter. But now home alone with her newborn, she is ill at ease with this state of perpetual giv... continue