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    Europe Central (Paperback) By (author) William T. Vollmann

    04

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    Short Description for Europe CentralComposed of a series of intertwined stories which examine a vast array of characters, ranging from generals to martyrs, officers to poets, traitors to artists and musicians. This work deals with the moral decisions made by people in the most testing of times and offering a perspective on human actions during wartime.
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  • Powerful but patchy4

    Sholto Spradbury This is a book about the insoluble moral choices posed by war and tyranny, set in Germany and Russia from the October Revolution to the height of the Cold War. Given this breadth, the narrative is somewhat fragmented, alternating from didactic to personal, clinical to hallucinatory, but revolves most closely around the life and work of Shostakovich.
    The other characters are historical also - mostly soldiers and artists, whose lives have been meticulously researched then bravely re-imagined. I recommend reading up on WWII history, especially the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad, before launching into this book as the narrative concentrates on details, and its time-line is often intentionally elliptical. Other events - the Purges, the Holocaust, the Berlin Wall - are probably familiar enough to most. Readers will also want to have some recordings of Shostakovich on hand - namely symphony no. 7, a cello sonata op. 40, and a string quartet op.110.
    Vollmann has unearthed some fascinating episodes and relentlessly immerses us in the monstrosity and mundanity of his subject, but I found my engagement with the work ebbed and flowed. Many of the chapters were clearly published separately and there is little to link them together. There are numerous first person accounts, but the identity of the narrators is confusing and obscure. The attempts to capture the verbal mannerisms of Shostakovich were annoying and made him sound like a rube. I also thought some of the more surreal stretches of writing were a little too Pynchonesque, and jarred with the solemn tone of the book as a whole - humour in the book works best with the numerous ironic reproductions of signs, slogans and media grabs.
    Despite these complaints, I was consistently drawn back by isolated patches of brilliance. Especially suprising in such a bleak book were some of the finest pieces of erotic writing I've ever read. by Sholto Spradbury

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