During the past few years, I had barely thought about Paris; about what the city meant to me and the many years I spent there. But for a moment, as I stood waiting for the traffic light to turn, enveloped by a cold fall wind, I felt like someone just returned to a place where her absence has been tangible and significant; a place that remembers the one gone away and patiently awaits her return, like parents do, like someone who loves you does.
Spanning the gulfs between the snow-laden streets of a childhood Moscow, the haute-bourgeois salons of Paris, and the run-down opulence of an apartment on the sea promenade of Nice, Europe is Maxim Grigoriev’s great narrative of exile and a deconstruction of the concept of exile as such. At its core is Nikita, newly settled in the apartment he has just inherited from his only friend, the woman who saved him from life on the streets: the difficult and mysterious Nina. We follow his story both as a run-away adolescent and as a middle-aged man coming to terms with a fractured existence and unmoored life. As Nikita’s introspection deepens, the image of Europe as an open and cosmopolitan haven begins to crack: the continent that once seemed vibrant and full of promise becomes a retreating illusion: distant, untethered, and quietly crumbling.
Europe is a complex and polyvocal novel that deals with the deepest philosophical questions concerning the disjuncture between individual human existence and broader society. With sharp wit and profound empathy, Grigoriev paints a picture of a pitch-black Europe and a Russia that never came to be, all while showing how storytelling itself can be a flicker of light amid the darkness. Most importantly, Grigoriev crafts two complex portraits of self-contradictory souls – individuals torn between an insatiable yearning for a home and the corrosive resentment of their own desires.
Extra Materials
Serbia, Treći Trg
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Reviews
“It is elegantly executed, beautiful and ugly all at once, annoying and touching, as complex as a human being.”
Expressen (SE)
“It’s a Devil’s Bible of exile literature, and a grand novel with countless layers. […] It feels more like a brooding novel translated from one of the major European languages, than the third book from a relatively young Swedish author. I read it as a haunting novel about Europe after the rain, in the calm before the storm.”
Dagens Nyheter (SE)
“[Maxim Grigoriev] elevates both himself and the entire genre by sheer force and shows proof of a successful art of expression. […] Another central theme is the emergence of a language; the Swedish text interleaves repeatedly with expressions in French and Russian, ultimately forming a kind of polyglot choir that says the same thing in different tunes.”
Göteborgs-Posten (SE)
“[…] the most literarily exciting thing I have read from a Swedish author in years.. […] Fine-tuned, dissonant and remarkably engaging amidst all the emptiness – Europe is undoubtedly a Swedish novel of European dimensions.”
Sydsvenskan (SE)
“Out of the extraordinarily crafted text, a course of event emerges . […] Following in the tradition of Central European Prose, in the likes of Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard and perhaps W.G. Sebald, Maxim Grigoriev sets his sight and, with the novel Europe, demonstrates a remarkably precise aim.”
Västerbottens-Kuriren (SE)
“Grigoriev writes a hypnotic, suggestive and chiseled prose which, despite its sometimes manically detailed descriptions, always feels alive and dynamic – and is not without dark humor. I can imagine that the emigrant’s feeling of duality and disorientation might feel just like this. The narration is slow, but never stale!”
BTJ (SE)
“[…] the one who reads to increase their sensitivity, to get close to people and contemplate what a life truly is, will want to linger in this book for a long time. […] Nikita is, in many ways, a gloomy figure, almost passive in his interactions with other people – a listener and observer, much like a reader – but with a rare stylistic ability and linguistic sensibility which turns the exile into a pleasure.”
SVT Kultur (SE)
“Through a very skillful portrayal and a sharp, analytical gaze, Maxim Grigoriev captures the often painful emotions evoked by the protagonist’s geographical and cultural rootlessness. Even if the theme of emigration -t is the most apparent in the novel, it also seeks to answer the more universal questions about the human condition.”
Barometern (SE)
“Everything is pitch-black, often intelligent, and Grigoriev’s prose is epically powerful.”
Norrbottens-Kuriren (SE)
“Grand and pitch perfect. […] It is literature, true literature.”
Folkbladet (SE)
“An exceptionally skillfully composed novel about the terms of exile for three eccentric Russians in Paris. The author himself moves freely between European metropolises and writes in a style that can be compared to the continent’s finest.”
Västerbottens-Kuriren (SE)