This is Europe

What does it now mean to call yourself European? Who makes up this population of some 750 million, sprawled from Ireland to Ukraine, from Sweden to Turkey? Who has always called it home, and who has newly arrived from elsewhere? Who are the people who drive our long-distance lorries, steward our criss-crossing planes, lovingly craft our legacy wines, fish our depleted waters, and risk life itself in search of safety and a new start?

In a series of vivid, ambitious, darkly visceral but always empathetic portraits of other people’s lives, journalist Ben Judah invites us to meet them. Drawn from hours of painstaking interviews, these vital stories reveal a frenetic and vibrant continent which has been transformed by diversity, migration, the internet, climate change, Covid, war and the quest for freedom.

Laid dramatically bare, it may not always be a Europe we recognize – but this is Europe.

Imagine Ballard and Houellebecq teaming up on a Grand Tour, and you will have some idea of just how vivid, urgent and unsettling this superbly written book is. ― Tom Holland

Ben Judah has the ability to listen and retell, see and describe, feel and convey so that the reader believes they were there and experienced it all first hand. Through personal stories, told to him by an array of unlikely heroes, Judah paints another Europe with intense and dramatic detail – a Europe that you may not recognize, but that you will look for every day having read this book. ― Andrey Kurkov