Europe Central

Summary

A massive, polyphonic novel that pairs and contrasts figures from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War, including composers, generals, filmmakers, and resisters. Vollmann moves between historical record and inward, almost operatic monologue, asking how individuals make moral choices under totalitarian regimes. Encyclopedic in scope, it is one of the most ambitious and structurally daring American novels of its decade.