Europe at 27 – First Part (A-I)

Germany. The post-Second World War period was marked by the division of Germany from 1949 to 1990. Major literary works were produced on both sides of the Wall. In the West, in 1959, Günter Grass wrote about the Nazi past of a German family from Danzig (now Gdansk) in The Tin Drum. Its main character is a boy who, at the age of three, decides not to grow up any more. In the East, Christa Wolf created They Divided the Sky in 1963, a great contemplative work about a loving couple torn apart by political division, shortly before the construction of the Wall. The two books became bestsellers on both sides of the wall, and were each magnificently adapted for the screen by Volker Schlöndorff (1979) and Konrad Wolf (1964).

Austria. One evening at dusk in the early 1940s, a father and daughter arrive in a village in Upper Austria on a horse-drawn cart, with their trunks and furniture, and settle into an abandoned farmhouse allocated to them. The traumatized girl clutches a bunch of red lilacs in her fist. Ferdinand Goldberger, section leader of the Nazi party, had to flee his home village, but his crimes will weigh heavily on his descendants. With his sumptuous novel Red Lilac, Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker (born 1982) left a significant mark on German-language literature and literature in general. Already a classic.

Belgium. It is sometimes forgotten, but the father of the world's most famous police detective is not French, but Belgian. Within six months, five lonely women are murdered in Montmartre. It's a challenge for Maigret: a conversation with a psychiatrist leads him to discover that he must first understand the killer's mental mechanism. In this episode of Maigret's adventures set in Montmartre, Simenon analyses with surgical precision a singular figure of the "serial killer", masterfully blending elements from psychoanalysis into his universe.

Bulgaria. Born in Bulgaria, Elitza Gueorguieva arrived in France at the age of 18, where she studied film. She then worked as an assistant before moving on to directing. She is the author of several autobiographical novels, acclaimed for their accuracy and humor. In Les cosmonautes ne font que passer, her first novel published in 2016, she recounts her childhood dream of becoming a cosmonaut like Yuri Gagarin, the idol of the entire Communist bloc. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 turned that dream on its head.

Cyprus. When the Iliad begins, the Trojan War has been going on for twenty years. It had been recounted in a twelve-song epic, the Cyprian Songs, now lost and traditionally attributed to Stasinos of Cyprus, but a late summary of the story allows us to reconstruct its plot. This vast treasure trove of legends provided the tragic poets of Athens with much of the material for their dramas. Among them, it is Euripides in particular, thanks to his preserved plays and his lost theatre, that we can best imagine the forms through which this transmutation from epic to theatre took place in a city that was also constantly experiencing the horrors of war.

Croatia. In a Dalmatian coast of Croatia village, 17-year-old Silva disappears during the fishermen's festival. Inspector Gorki Šain's investigation into the agony of Yugoslavia reveals a more complex portrait of Silva than her family realized. But history is on the march, Tito's regime is collapsing, and in the midst of the chaos, the case is closed. Only Silva's family stubbornly continues investigating... Through this intimate drama, L'Eau rouge unfolds in a great fresco the disruptions of Croatian society, from the fall of Communism to the explosion of tourism, via the civil war... A novel covered with prizes, including the Prix du Polar Européen - Le Point 2021.

Denmark. The African Farm is one of the most popular works of twentieth-century literature, and Sydney Pollack's 1985 film adaptation, Out of Africa: Memories of Africa, certainly helped! It tells the story of a young Danish aristocrat who, through her marriage, becomes Baroness Karen Blixen (Meryl Steep in the film), who comes to feel a deep love for Africa as Europe enters the First World War. Abandoned by her husband, Karen falls in love with an adventure-loving hunter, Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford). But he disappears. While the film, acclaimed by millions of viewers and winner of seven Oscars, is certainly a success, it should not overshadow the great writer who was Karen Blixen, born Karen Christentze Dinesen.

Spain. From the hell of the gulag in the 1930s to modern-day Barcelona, the children of the heroes inherit the venom. It is an opportunity for a misunderstood son to shatter the statue of the Commander, to get to know the man so that he can love his father.

Estonia. Novelist and playwright Sofi Oksanen enjoyed international success with Purge, her third novel, published in 2008. The story takes place in 1992, at the end of summer, in Estonia. The Soviet Union is collapsing and the population is celebrating the departure of the Russians. Except for old Aliide, who lives holed up in her farmhouse. When she finds Zara in her garden, a young woman who has been forced into prostitution in Berlin by Russian mafiosi, battered and on the run, old Aliide, who has also experienced violence and humiliation, is reluctant to take her in. But in the end, a friendship develops between her and Zara. Through these intertwined destinies full of sound and fury, Sofi Oksanen traces fifty years of Estonian history, a great book about lies and fear.

Finland. When the narrator of this novel suddenly loses her father and finds her life turned upside down, she looks back to her childhood. As she confronts her memories, it appears to her in a new light, although repainted in a strange hue. The lowest common denominator is the story of this woman and the little girl inside her: a little girl who always wanted to be a boy, telling her own story in the third person. This fragmented narrative, which questions identity, sexuality and our relationship with the world, is the first part of an auto-fictional trilogy in which Helsinki, as a backdrop, evolves over the decades.

France. Through twelve photographs and the memories left behind by events, words and things, Annie Ernaux gives us a sense of the passage of time, from the post-war years to the present day. At the same time, she inscribes existence in a new form of autobiography, impersonal and collective. Annie Ernaux was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022.

Greece. The story of this hero, Ulysses, victor over the Trojans who seeks to return home after ten years spent on the battlefield, is one of the pillars of European culture. With the ten-year journey that Odysseus spends battling the gods, temptations and curses, and then, once on his island, against the pretenders to his succession, The Odyssey marks the transition from one world, that of the age of heroes, populated by gods and warriors, to another, that of men, freed from determinism and open to the future.

Hungary. Les Garçons de la rue Pal (The Boys of Pal Street), published in 1906, is Hungary's most famous novel. The story is about a war between two rival gangs of children in Budapest at the very beginning of the 20th century. At stake is a wasteland on Pal Street. All the aspects of war stories are present in this deeply moving book - loyalty, betrayal, espionage, strategy, the arms race, heroism - with an intensity equal to that of real, "adult" wars. And if the novel leaves such a deep imprint on the reader's mind, it is no doubt due to the fact that it is constantly on both the side of the war and the side of the game, laying bare the workings of all war, right up to the point of absurdity and tragedy.

Ireland. Connell and Marianne grew up in the same Irish town. He's the popular boy at school, she's the awkward loner. Together they fall in love for the first time. A year later, while Marianne is blossoming at Trinity College Dublin, Connell is struggling to acclimatize to university life. The game between them has only just begun. A masterly novel about youth, friendship, sex, and a generation that is no longer allowed to dream, but persists in hoping. A contemporary novel that has become a must-read.