Recent Reading: Europe Central

It is not easy to describe Vollmann’s 800+ page book; I will call it a series of linked stories/novellas about Germans and Russians during the German invasion of Russia in WWII. By far the most interesting and important character is Dmitri Shostakovich. In his notes at the end of the book Vollmann says:

When I think of Shostakovich, and when I listen to his music, I imagine a person consumed by fear and regret, a person who did what little he could to uphold the good — in this case, freedom of artistic creation, and the mitigation of other people’s emergencies.

Vollmann’s book reminded me of some worthwhile texts about the second world war I have enjoyed over the last five years including:

• The poetry of Anna Akhmatova
• A Woman in Berlin
• Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War
• MT Anderson’s Symphony for the city of the Dead (YA novel)
• Anna Reid’s Leningrad (“the deadliest blockade of a city in human history”)
• Lars Von Trier’s picture Europa
• The music of Dmitri Shostakovich (start with the fifth symphony)