Simon Heffer
A Turbulent Continent
The Struggle for Europe: The History of the Continent since 1945
By William I Hitchcock
Profile 528pp £25 order from our bookshop
So much seems to have happened in the crowded and explosive place called Europe since the end of the Second World War that it would seem to defy any historian to encapsulate it in one medium-sized book. We have had the division of the continent, and its reunification; the foundation of what is now the European Union; and, outside the Soviet bloc, coups, civil wars and other interruptions to the smooth progress of what is supposed to be the First World. To even the most subtle and elastic of minds, this represents an awful lot to comprehend and analyse.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'In their needling, selfish, dry-as-dust way, these three books are works of cumulative power and never less than consistent interest.'
@lieutenantkije weighs up the final novel in J M Coetzee's Jesus trilogy.
http://ow.ly/TuWo50xqrL0
'It remains a poem comprised of clay fragments, short and long, and though the desert delivers up occasional additional text, we are a long way from a whole poem.'
Michael Schmidt on the oldest surviving poem in the world.
http://ow.ly/7OLF50xqr91
'Apparently if you’re a teenager and you send a declaration of love to someone heart emoji, heart emoji, heart emoji and they come back smiley face, that’s the worst.'
Thomas Blaikie tries to get his head round the language of the internet.
http://ow.ly/TU6d50xroRc