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Europe Central by William T. Vollman
01/05/2005 . Source: Paul Hanley 
pub: Viking. 811 page hardback. Price: $39.95 (US), $58.00 (CAN). ISBN: 0-670-03392-8. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.penguin.com
I love alternative histories and I think I have every What If? book published that relates to World War II. When I had the opportunity to pick 'Europe Central' to review, I jumped at the chance because I though this was a What If? which dealt with the Soviet and Nazi regimes. What a disappointment this book has been.
It does dealt with both internal events in the Soviet Union and Germany and their
relations with each other from around the beginning of World War I until the end
of the Soviet Union. The author does demonstrate in his writings, which are fragmented
rather than one seamless tale, a great deal of knowledge of the period and of
the events and personalities involved. However, the book's style of writing, which
I think is intended to be literary, I found generally pretentious and essentially
incomprehensible. I may be a philistine but I do have an MA in History, a law
degree and I have also been a soldier so I feel I am fairly well equipped as a
lay person to read a book which relates to this bloody era. However, most of what
is in this book I could not make any sense of at all. Another irritation is that
whilst these pieces are written from different viewpoints certain characters are
always referred to in the same way. For instance, Hitler seems always to be referred
to as the sleepwalker and other expressions and phrases recur repeatedly no matter
whose voice is apparently narrating.
Despite this, there are other passages and unfortunately I am not permitted quote any because my copy of the book was an advance uncorrected proof, such as the first person narrative of a secret policeman recounting his decades long spying and harassment of a famous Soviet poetess which I enjoyed. This character's musing brought to life the malign nature of a totalitarian regime and a vivid picture of what a nasty piece of work the narrator was. This was excellent but it rather threw into darker shadow the rest of this very long book which was frankly tedious.
Certainly not worth buying and I would not recommend you waste any of your time getting it out of the library.
Paul Hanley
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