A dazzling, highly original account of three remarkable
individuals and their part in creating the matchless new culture of
19th-century Europe.
Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Peasant Russia, Civil War, A People's Tragedy, Natasha's Dance, The Whisperers, Crimea and Just Send Me Word. His work has won a number of major prizes and been translated into some thirty different languages.
Magnificent. Beautifully written, immaculately researched and
thoroughly absorbing from start to finish. A tour de force that
explains how Europe's cultural life transformed during the course
of the 19th century - and so much more.
*Peter Frankopan*
Magnificent and utterly gripping: European identity, culture and
commerce through the lives of three remarkable individuals, the
book for our times.
*Philippe Sands*
It plunged me into another world. I learned so much and was carried
away by the intelligence and fluidity of the style - a combination
which is unbeatable.
*Antonia Fraser*
[There are] a multitude of fascinating pieces of information to be
gleaned from Orlando Figes's magisterial and wide-ranging book The
Europeans ... Relevant, trenchant and searching.
*The Guardian*
Meticulously detailed, exhaustively researched and written with
Figes's characteristic verve, The Europeans is a sweeping tour de
force and a monumental work of historical synthesis.
*The Observer*
Figes in his maturity is a fine, subtle writer with a nice eye for
detail and clever with structure. I finished the book entertained,
informed and armed with the kinds of insights and questions that
will keep me happily going for the rest of the year.
*The Times*
Remarkable ... Orlando Figes is a fine historian who combines
scholarly detail with readability. His wide-ranging book touches on
a multitude of subjects. But at its heart is a love triangle - the
very human story of three remarkable individuals whose lives he has
resurrected with great sympathy and insight.
*Daily Mail*
Timely, brilliant and hugely enjoyable ... A magnificently humane
book, written with supple grace but firmly underpinned by
meticulous scholarship.
*Sunday Telegraph*
Extraordinary ... It is a world of cultural sophistication and
emotional complexity played out against a backdrop of breath-taking
economic and technological progress.
*Financial Times*
Orlando Figes's majestic, passionately engaged The Europeans could
hardly be more timely. Huge in scope yet packed with detail, it's a
riveting account of the emergence of 19th-century pan-European
culture ... Most thought-provoking is how alive this history still
feels today.
*BBC Music Magazine*
I loved the book. I read it in every spare moment, fascinated and
sometimes surprised. All of the principal characters are inspiring,
but The Europeans also shows the struggles and backbiting and
mistakes which can also lie behind a repertoire we tend to take for
granted. I have been speaking about the book to everyone I know: it
is clearly not just a book for musicians but for the widest
audience interested in literature, music and art.
*Barbara Hannigan*
The Europeans is a massively impressive work, as enjoyable as it is
knowledgeable, full of insights into the mechanisms of history and
in the people who make it. It is a book about the making of Europe,
and this description, wonderful as it is, has now, in these days,
sadly, also almost a utopian quality to it. Orlando Figes is an
outstanding historian and writer, he brings distant history so
close that you could feel its heartbeat. He did it with the Russian
Revolution in A People's Tragedy, and he does it again in The
Europeans.
*Karl Ove Knausgaard*
An extraordinary, capacious and accomplished biography ... Deeply
researched and engaging, it is filled with revelations, and takes
us fascinatingly into European culture in the 19th century.
*BBC History Magazine*
Figes's knowledge is breath-taking in its range and precision ... A
conclusion to draw from The Europeans is that tribalism is stronger
than art ... This a melancholy reflection, but it accentuates,
rather than reduces, the value of Figes's tumultuously informative
and educative work.
*Sunday Times*
Written beautifully, with striking wit, joie de vivre and learning
worn lightly... this superb, flamboyant and masterful tour
d'horizon is fun, anecdotal and fascinating, colourful and
playful.
*Financial Times*
Magnificent
*Guardian*
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