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Europe Central
by William T. Vollmann


9.6

based on 13 reviews
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based on 3 votes
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The acclaimed author's ambitious (and lengthy) twelfth novel centers on WWII but moves backward and forward in time, telling the stories of various Russians and Germans facing an assortment of challenges.

Viking, 832 pages
03/24/2005
$39.95

ISBN: 0670033928

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

NOTES:
Winner of the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction.

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Publishers Weekly

Few American writers infuse their writing with similar urgency. [7 Feb 2005, p. 38]

Review Of Contemporary Fiction James Crossley

Read it. It stands with Vollmann's best work, and his best work can stand with anyone's. [Summer 2005, p. 137]

The New York Times Book Review Tom LeClair

Part novel and part stories, virtuoso historical remembrance and focused study of violence, ''Europe Central'' orchestrates the best of Vollmann's past impulses into one large-minded and bighearted ''Opus 15.'' Or ''Opus 21.''

TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Daniel Lukes

William T. Vollmann is at his best when conveying a sensual immediacy in prose... That he has turned to the historical novel and made it his own, fashioning a work which is cinematic in scope, epic in ambition and continuously engaging, shows that he is one of the most important and fascinating writers of our time.

Boston Globe John Freeman

With this profound and fully realized new work of fiction, Vollmann asks us to put aside what we think we know of history and immerse ourselves in it once again. He posits that even if it is the devil that lives in St. Petersburg, not God, it is our duty to know him, too.

Los Angeles Times Melvin Jules Bukiet

Vollmann has created a book that aspires to the highest possible potential of literature. "Europe Central" is more than physically enormous; it is morally significant. [20 Mar 2005, p.R5]

San Francisco Chronicle Steve Kettmann

"Europe Central," angry and vivid, claustrophobic and consuming, mesmerizing and meandering, has an emotional force capable of ripping almost any reader from his moorings, or at the very least, inspiring a strange and overpowering urge to sit sobbing over Dmitri Shostakovich's heartbreaking, dead-man-walking Opus 110 for days on end.

Washington Post Steven Moore

I've reviewed nearly all of Vollmann's books over the years and am running out of superlatives; suffice it to say, if you've been following his extraordinary career, Europe Central may be his best novel yet.

The Independent Matt Thorne

Europe Central is an enormous accomplishment, but really only offers a starting-point to understanding this author's oeuvre.

Village Voice Brandon Stosuy

It's likely up to Vollmann to carry the torch of post-pomo overambition. Even if he does drop it here and there, he's created something of both beauty and historical use value, a visionary textbook on human suffering.

New York Review Of Books Michael Wood

The book is always lucid, even as it hovers between the obvious and the recondite, and the under- and over-examined, but it is not seeking a conclusion, only a new framing of moral options, and the pathos of Europe Central is that it reminds us that a moral calculus is only as good as its local practitioners can make it.

Kirkus Reviews Bruce Allen

Overlong, redundant, accusatory and harrowing, part hubristic overkill, part unruly masterpiece, this startling fever dream is another astonishment from one of the world's maddest, most commanding and necessary writers. [1 Mar 2005]

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Darryl Whetter

Sadly, dubious narrative strategies and undirected characters deny much emotional or intellectual depth to the novel's ambitious historical breadth. [30 Jul 2005]

The average user rating for this book is 9.6 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Matt DC gave it a9:
I could find only one book supplier in Australia with Europe Central in stock - a real pity, as this is fantastic, enriching (and very long) experience. The evocation of war and its individual effects is brilliant, although a couple of the chapter/vignettes become a bit obscure.

mike s gave it a10:
The book was absolutely amazing. Lots of depth and written well for repeated readings. A masterpiece.

ross h gave it a10:
I loved it & from my knowledge of 20th century history and Shostakovich, I couldn't fault it.

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Europe Central by William T. Vollmann

Europe Central
by William T. Vollmann