Europe Central

Europe Central is a novel by William T. Vollmann made up of a series of linked narratives set in Germany and the Soviet Union during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Moving between the two authoritarian powers that went to war with each other, the book follows a wide cast of real and invented people, including soldiers, artists, officials and informers, some famous, some infamous and some unknown. Each story turns on a moral decision made under pressure, as individuals choose between conscience and survival, loyalty and betrayal, art and obedience. Among the figures who recur are composers, filmmakers and military commanders whose lives were shaped by dictatorship and war. Long, dense and ambitious, the novel invites readers to compare how ordinary and extraordinary people behaved under totalitarian rule. It won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction.