Europe Central
A sprawling mosaic of interconnected lives across Central Europe during World War II, weaving together a Soviet composer's doomed love triangle with the harrowing choices of an SS officer and the women caught between them. Told in shifting perspectives that blur fact from fiction, it is a meditation on morality under extreme pressure.
The narrative is heavily researched and features many real historical figures, including Dmitri Shostakovich, Käthe Kollwitz, and Kurt Gerstein, though the author explicitly categorizes the work as fiction and includes invented details, such as a central love triangle between Shostakovich, Roman Karmen, and Elena Konstantinovskaya.
It was awarded the National Book Award for Fiction in 2005.
The novel is organized as a series of linked narratives that function like paired stories, comparing and contrasting the moral dilemmas faced by various German and Soviet individuals throughout the twentieth century.
