Read Around Europe Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Europe.
Best books from Europe (2889)
2381.
Clara's War : A Young Girl's True Story of Miraculous Survival Under the Nazis by Clara Kramer, Stephen Glantz EN
UkraineDescription:
On 21 July 1942 the Nazis invaded Poland. In the small town of Zolkiew, life for Jewish 15-year-old Clara Kramer was never to be the same again. While those around her were either slaughtered or transported, Clara and her family hid perilously in a hand-dug cellar. Living above and protecting them were the Becks. Mr Beck was a womaniser, a drunkard and a self-professed anti-Semite, yet he risked his life throughout the war to keep his charges safe. Nevertheless, life with Mr Beck was far from predictable. From the house catching fire, to Beck's affair with Clara's cousin, to the nightly SS dri... continue
2383.
The Hard Parts : A Memoir of Courage and Triumph by Oksana Masters EN
Description:
“A gut-wrenching, wildly inspiring story about overcoming the most daunting obstacles through steely tenacity, sheer will, and a great big dose of motherly love.” —Jeannette Walls, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle An inspirational and powerful memoir from the United States’s most decorated winter Paralympic or Olympic athlete, The Hard Parts is Oksana Masters’s gripping account of overcoming extraordinary Chernobyl disaster–caused physical challenges to create a life that challenges everyone to push through what is holding them back. Oksana Masters was born in Ukraine—i... continue
2384.
Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexiévich EN
Description:
Winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureWinner of the National Book Critics Circle AwardA journalist by trade, who now suffers from an immune deficiency developed while researching this book, presents personal accounts of what happened to the people of Belarus after the nuclear reactor accident in 1986, and the fear, anger, and uncertainty that they still live with. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."
2385.
La cripta de los capuchinos by Joseph Roth ES
Description:
El protagonista de “La Cripta de los Capuchinos”, heredero de una familia de orígenes humildes ennoblecida por Francisco José, describe su vida en la Viena deslumbrante en los albores de la Primera Guerra Mundial. A los últimos estertores del imperio de los Habsburgo siguen los días trágicos de la guerra y de una postguerra gris y violenta. Antes de que los nazis entren en Viena, el joven Trotta, símbolo de un mundo en declive, baja a la cripta a la que alude el título de la novela, el panteón imperial austríaco, donde confesará su fracaso. “La Cripta de los Capuchinos” (1938) es tanto la nove... continue
2386.
Klotsvog by Margarita Khemlin EN
Description:
Klotsvog is a novel about being Jewish in the Soviet Union and the historical trauma of World War II--and it's a novel about the petty dramas and demons of one strikingly vain woman. Maya Abramovna Klotsvog has had quite a life, and she wants you to know all about it. Selfish, garrulous, and thoroughly entertaining, she tells us where she came from, who she didn't get along with, and what became of all her husbands and lovers. In Klotsvog, Margarita Khemlin creates a first-person narrator who is both deeply self-absorbed and deeply compelling. From Maya's perspective, Khemlin unfurls a retelli... continue
2387.
Reden An Den Kleinen Mann by Wilhelm Reich DE
Description:
Listen, Little Man! (Reden An Den Kleinen Mann) is a great physician's quiet talk to each one of us, the average human being, the Little Man. Written in 1946 in answer to the gossip and defamation that plagued his remarkable career, it tells how Reich watched, at first naively, then with amazement, and finally with horror, at what the Little Man does to himself; how he suffers and rebels; how he esteems his enemies and murders his friends; how, wherever he gains power as a "representative of the people," he misuses this power and makes it crueler than the power it has supplanted... continue
2388.
The Dogs and the Wolves by Irène Némirovsky EN
Description:
"This wonderful, panoramic novel goes right back to Ir ne Nemirovsky s roots, sweeping the reader from the Jewish quarter of a Ukrainian city in the early years of the twentieth century to Paris in the twenties and thirties, and back again to eastern Europe in a snowy winter on the eve of war. At its heart is a tragic love, between Ada from the poor Jewish quarter and Harry, son of a rich financier. The dogs are the comfortable, assimilated rich Jews up on the hill, while the wolves, their distant cousins, struggle below in the ghetto. Ada grows up motherless, looked after first by her father,... continue
2389.
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky EN
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The remarkable story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control during World War II—a heartrending "portrait of a small French town under seige, and the people trying to survive, even to live, as Hitler’s horrors march closer and closer to their doors" (New York). “Stunning.... A tour de force.” —The New York Times Book Review Beginning in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in 1940, as Parisians flee the city, human folly surfaces in every imaginable way: a wealthy mother searches for sweets in a town without food; a couple is terrified at... continue
2390.
The Wine of Solitude by Irène Némirovsky EN
Description:
Imbued with melancholy, and regret, this work explores the troubled relationship between a young girl, her distant, self-absorbed mother and her mother's lover, Max. We follow the family through the Great War and the Russian Revolution, as the young Helene grows from a dreamy, unhappy child into an angry young woman."