Read Around Europe Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Europe.
Best books from Europe (1700)
601.
Never Go to the Post Office Alone by Stelios Kouloglou EN
GreeceDescription:
Great historical events are never anonymousthey sweep anyone in their path into the fray. Kevin Danaher, a foreign correspondent in Moscow, will discover exactly that, as he queues at the citys central post office one morning in 1989, waiting to send a fax to his newspaper in New York. How could he know that the beautiful East German woman standing in front of him was the means chosen by fate to throw him onto the stage of world history? With the Soviet Union collapsing and the Berlin Wall about to fall, this moment of history would change the world, and Kevins life, forever. Stelios Kouloglo... continue
602.
604.
They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy EN
HungaryDescription:
"Perfect late night reading" JAN MORRIS "Banffy is a born storyteller" PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR "Totally absorbing" MARTHA KEARNEY "So evocative" SIMON JENKINS An extraordinary portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, this epic story is told through the eyes of two cousins, Count Balint Abady and Count Laszlo Gyeroffy. Shooting parties in great country houses, turbulent scenes in parliament and the luxury life in Budapest provide the backdrop for this gripping, prescient novel, forming a chilling indictment of upper-class frivolity and political folly in which good manners cloak indiffe... continue
605.
Description:
One of The New York Times Book Review's "10 Best Books of 2015" An NYRB Classics Original The Door is an unsettling exploration of the relationship between two very different women. Magda is a writer, educated, married to an academic, public-spirited, with an on-again-off-again relationship to Hungary’s Communist authorities. Emerence is a peasant, illiterate, impassive, abrupt, seemingly ageless. She lives alone in a house that no one else may enter, not even her closest relatives. She is Magda’s housekeeper and she has taken control over Magda’s household, becoming indispensable to her. And ... continue
606.
Abigail by Magda Szabó EN
Description:
A teenage girl's difficult journey towards adulthood in a time of war. "Szabo is skilful at creating moments of heart-rending tension, often through exquisite, evocative prose . . . the novel has a devastating power" Spectator Of all her novels, Magda Szabó's Abigail is the most widely read in her native Hungary. Now, fifty years after it was written, it appears for the first time in English, joining Katalin Street and The Door in a loose trilogy about the impact of war on those who have to live with the consequences. It is late 1943 and Hitler, exasperated by the slowness of his Hungarian all... continue
607.
Embers by Sandor Marai EN
Description:
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
608.
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
609.
Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy EN
Description:
A haunting Hungarian novel, and a vision of hell unlike any previously imagined.
610.
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.