Europe Central by William Vollmann
Magnificent; Unputdownable; Terrifying
In this magnificent work of fiction, William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant
eye to the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the
twentieth century. Assembling a composite portrait of these two warring
leviathans and the terrible age they defined, the narrative intertwines
experiences both real and fictional—a young German who joins the SS to
expose its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for
different reasons, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich laboring under
Stalinist oppression. Through these and other lives, Vollmann offers a
daring and mesmerizing perspective on human actions during wartime.
Personal Review: Europe Central by William Vollmann
'Europe Central' surpasses genre. For all I learned about Germany and
Russia from this book, it could well have been a history textbook; but the
unflagging eloquence of its prose earns it a place amongst the great
novels of our time. The novel grapples with vast, vast ideas, but the story
is not crushed by didacticism. On the contrary, 'Europe Central' paints the

struggles, whether military, political, ideological, psychological, or personal,
in vivid and often nightmarish colors. I was extremely impressed by the
author's facility with narrative voice and his expressive and lavish prose
style.
The novel is not organized round a plot that points at any conclusion;
rather, it is a sequence of vignettes that contribute to a Gestalt of the times
it covers. Certain characters, especially the composer Dmitri Shostakovich
and his love interest Elena Konstantinovskaya, have a presence
throughout the novel, but the vignettes are in only a loose chronological
order. I found this presentation extremely effective. Readers who find
themselves adrift without the presence of a plot may not enjoy 'Europe
Central' as much as I did, but I urge anyone who appreciates good
literature, or who is interested in the Second World War, the Cold War, and
the history of European totalitarianism, to give it a good long try.
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