He began reporting the book back in 2018. How, I asked, did he move from writing about one city to writing about a continent? Judah told me that, for him, there are three Europes: a Europe of the mind, imagined by readers around the world as featuring glitzy coffee shops and philosophers and stained-glass windows a political Europe, featuring the European Commission and the Eurozone and figures like French President Emmanuel Macron and the Europe “we actually live in.” It was this third Europe that interested him, and about which he wanted to write.Īnti-Brexit protesters on a street in londonĪnti-Brexit protesters wave the flags of the United Kingdom, Ireland, and European Union outside Parliament in London on Oct. By that, I mean we are in the same online Diplomacygroup (he has ruined my game once I have ended his three times). I talked to him about his new book, rather than writing a straight review, since he and I are friendly. He initially became known as an author for This is London, his second book and a first-person account of the titular city. Judah had other works in mind, though, while writing This Is Europe. But mostly the focus is on individual people telling the stories of the ways they live. One chapter involves COVID-19 another, the war in Ukraine. This book is like that, but for all of Europe. It reminded me of the movie Paris, Je T’aime, in which Paris is shown through a series of short stories, each reflecting or exploring a different neighborhood. Rather, This Is Europe is less a straight telling of contemporary European politics and more a series of vignettes. relations and on post-Brexit Britain.īut this is not that book. At the Atlantic Council, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., he is director of the Transform Europe Initiative and a senior fellow at the Europe Center. Judah, a British-French writer, is, after all, also a policy analyst. This could, theoretically, have been a text that looks directly at the politics and economics of Europe after Brexit (or any number of other calamities from the past several years). Readers who are expecting an answer to Tony Judt’s Postwar will be surprised. This Is Europe, Ben Judah, Picador, 512 pp, £22.00, June 2023.
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