In Europe

Book excerpt: The Vintage Classics Europeans series - with covers provided by textile design firm Wallace Sewell, these are must-have editions of European masterpieces, celebrating the warp and weft of a shared literary treasury. In 1999, journalist and historian Geert Mak criss-crossed the continent in the simple yet monumental quest to trace European twentieth-century history as the world slipped into the twenty-first. In Europe is a dazzling account of that journey, and combines the larger story of Europe with intimate, vivid detail. It is also now a poignant reminder that the European project was then and is now a unprecedented experiment; that we still have 'a great deal to tell each other and a great deal to explain.' TRANSLATED FROM THE DUTCH BY SAM GARRETT 'A wonderfully rich journey through time and space' Independent on Sunday