Geert Mak's "In Europe"

Earlier this year, I got a copy of Geert Mak's "In Europe: Travels through the Twentieth Century." I dipped into it at a couple of bookstores, and was convinced I should read it. I brought it back to India and started it in June. I just finished it last week. Admittedly, it is a huge book (over 800 pages) and I have been very busy, but that is still a very long time for me to take over one book.

What a masterpiece!

It is a 20th century history structured like a travelogue, but there are places where the archival research could rival a traditional history book and places where the first person account is pure oral history.

For me, one of the most striking things about this book is the time and attention devoted to the Second World War. When you study either modern European history or the history of international relations at an Indian university, WWII (in student-write) is usually important but occupies no more than a maximum of 15-20% of the curriculum. Geert Mak devotes at least half and sometimes it seems like a lot more, of his book to this event.

There are first person descriptions of key events, carefully reconstructed battlefield accounts and passages from diaries and letters that describe life during the war. I wanted very much to quote some of them but I did not, alas, read the book with a pencil or place bookmarks along the way so I cannot. There is no escaping how horrible the wartime experience was for any side.

From the chapter on Leningrad in 1942:
page 430: ' "You had to be in line at the bakery at 5 a.m., by 11.00 there was no bread left. It wasn't easy to walk around when you were starving, you had to drag yourself along by force of will. If possible, you kept all your clothes on in bed. You lay there like a big ball of rags, you forgot you even had a body. But, well, we were young Soviets, we had absolutely no doubt that we would be victorious." '
Page 431: ' "It was the women who won the war, everyone knows that. Their lot was the heaviest to bear. The party bosses could leave the city and come back by plane. They had their own food flown in as well, we found out about that a few years ago. They told dramatic stories about all their heroic hardships, but meanwhile they took good care of themselves. The common people couldn't do that. We wasted away; we were being shelled all the time."

If I had not told you that was about Leningrad in 1942, you could have assumed it was any contemporary war zone.

I would recommend this book as a companion to any European history text. I think it is a hard read but only because of the seriousness of its subject matter.

The writing is excellent, even in translation (or should I say the translation by Sam Garrett is excellent) and it humanizes events whose reach was global although in Mak's book, the rest of the world is really a distant footnote. That is in itself odd given Europe's imperial commitments at this time.

In that sense, along with the attention focused on one period and the relative lack of attention to the impact of decolonization, Mak underscores the very Eurocentric nature of the European perception of this war. I am not a historian of this period but I do not think I would be far off the mark in saying that by contrast, America's engagement with the world really began during this war. American popular histories, in print or film, seem to take cognizance of non-Euro-American people who were part of the war effort, even if Americans are portrayed in a singularly heroic light. I am only talking here of the way in which the Second World War is portrayed and perceived, and from a very inexpert perspective.

I found this book marvelous too for its descriptions of small detail and its quiet humour, expressed as relish rather than mockery, of the things that make us human. I am sure someone with the inclination will find a million things to deconstruct and critique from some deeply political perspective. I just soaked in the detail and traveled through time with Mak. I wish someone would write something like this on our part of the world.

And what I was going to say right after that, reminded me of another remarkable feature of this book: Mak himself features very little through its 800-plus pages although you know it is a journey he is undertaking and he does occasionally refer to himself to tell us where he went and how. It is a book written without the need to showcase the author's genius, and therefore, it does precisely that.

I cannot do justice to this book in one post, and I would really urge you to find a copy and persevere through it. As for me, this is going to be the year of 'fat books' (started with Rajmohan Gandhi's 'Mohandas' which I loved) and I have Ramachandra Guha's book and Nayan Chanda's as well waiting for me.