Geert Mak

Neerslag van een jaar lang reizen langs plaatsen die een belangrijke rol hebben gespeeld in de geschiedenis van Europa van de twintigste eeuw.

reizen door de twintigste eeuw

In Europa

Roos Kuijper 

Dit boek heeft mij aangenaam verrast. Toen ik hierin begon had ik weinig hoge verwachtingen. Door de persoonlijke verhalen vertelt Mak de geschiedenis van Europa van de 20e eeuw. Het is niet echt officieel "historisch" maar het is wel ontzettend leuk gedaan!

Alleen die epiloog, dat had voor mij echt niet gehoeven. Dat was gewoon een essay over hoe Europa er in 2007 voorstond maar had eigenlijk weinig op met de rest van het boek.

eine Reise durch das 20. Jahrhundert

heleen de boever

Journalist Mak spent the year of 1999 criss-crossing the continent, tracing the history of Europe from Verdun to Berlin, Saint Petersburg to Auschwitz, Kiev to Srebrenica. He set off in search of evidence and witnesses, looking to define the condition of Europe at the verge of a new millennium. In the voices of prominent figures and unknown players, Mak combines the larger story of twentieth-century Europe with details that give it a face, a taste and a smell. His unique approach makes the reader an eyewitness to a half-forgotten past, full of unknown peculiarities, sudden insights and touching encounters. This book reads like an epic novel of Europe's most extraordinary century.--From publisher description.

Travels Through the Twentieth Century

In Europe

Ipek

Nick Mastenbroek

"Geert Mak spent the year of 1999 criss-crossing the continent, tracing the historyof Europe from Verdun to Berlin, St Petersburg to Auschwitz, Kiev to Srebrenica. He set off in search of evidence and witnesses, looking to define the condition of Europe on the verge of a new millennium." --book jacket.

Frederik Van den Bril

Irma Kjellström

Geert Mak spent the year 1999 criss-crossing the continent, tracing the history of Europe from Verdun to Berlin, St Petersburg to Auschwitz, Kiev to Srebrenica. He set off in search of evidence and witnesses, looking to define the condition of Europe at the verge of a new millennium. The result is mesmerising: Mak's rare double talent as a sharp-eyed journalist and a hugely imaginative historian makes In Europe a dazzling account of that journey, full of diaries, newspaper reports and memoirs, and the voices of prominent figures and unknown players; from the grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II to Adriana Warno in Poland, with her holiday job at the gates of the camp at Birkenau. But Mak is above all an observer. He describes what he sees at places that have become Europe's well-springs of memory, where history is written into the landscape. At Ypres he hears the blast of munitions from the Great War that are still detonated twice a day. In Warsaw he finds the point where the tram rails that led to the Jewish ghetto come to a dead end in a city park. And in an abandoned crèche near Chernobyl, where tiny pairs of shoes still stand in neat rows, he is transported back to the moment time stood still in the dying days of the Soviet Union. Mak combines the larger story of twentieth-century Europe with details that suddenly give it a face, a taste and a smell. His unique approach makes the reader an eyewitness to his own half-forgotten past, full of unknown peculiarities, sudden insights and touching encounters. In Europe is a masterpiece; it reads like the epic novel of the continent's most extraordinary century.

In Europa reizen door de twintigste eeuw

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