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Europe Central

a book review by Nick Jackson

Europe Central

Author: William T. Vollmann

New York : Viking Penguin

March, 2005

ISBN: 0670033928

List Price: $39.95

“Europe Central” is the latest offering from William T. Vollmann’s list of massive works.  This novel tells a story of twentieth century European totalitarianism through the reconstructed lives of the era’s stars and bit players.  One star, Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, is woven throughout most of Europe Central’s numerous substories.

Vollmann reconstructs the central characters in his substories with voluminous research and only resorts to fictional characters as glue for connecting the novel’s various sections.  He uses various narrators throughout the novel and one is not quite sure whether parts of the story are told by the omniscient fly on the wall.  Or which chapters are told by cynical and unnamed state security investigators.  But once the reader becomes acclimated to Vollmann’s stream of consciousness narration it becomes clear that the citizens of Europe Central find themselves trapped by the Stalins and Hitlers of their times.

Although Europe Central is fiction, Vollmann reveals key truths with this work.  Each of the characters is trying to survive in the vast totalitarian sea that flooded Europe and reached a high-water mark by mid-twentieth century’s World War II.  By the time Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism engulfs Vollmann’s characters there is little opportunity for unambiguous moral choices.  Amidst a perception of changing polices and unfortunate political and military reverses, characters live in fear of denunciation and death.              

Some, such as Dmitri Shostakovich, make a series of personal and political betrayals throughout a long career of falling in and out of favor with Soviet officialdom.  Others, such as Soviet General Andrey Vlasov and Nazi Germany’s Friedrich Paulus, variously betrayed their supreme leaders’ suggestions to kill themselves rather than be captured by the opposing armies.  One can ponder whether the price of survival leaves the survivors of such situations with any dignity for the remainders of their lives.

The best way to avoid totalitarian environments, such as seen in William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central, is to divert evolution toward that twisted ecosystem in its early stages.  It was very late for the characters in Vollmann’s tale.

Europe Central is a 2005 National Book Award finalist for fiction.

Also in this section:
Books, Europe Central
Cool Internet Sites