Robert Menasse’s Die Hauptstadt, winner of the 2017 German Book Prize, has recently being published by MacLehose Press in an English translation by Jamie Bulloch. In this incarnation, the novel’s title is rendered as The Capital. This name, of course, a faithful and literal translation from the German, but I wonder whether it was also meant as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Karl Marx’s epic tome. Indeed, political and economic theories also loom large in Menasse’s Capital, except that they are presented within the context of a zany novel about the workings of the European Commission.

Die Hauptstadt has been described as the first great novel about the European Union. It could well be the case. I don’t profess to be some expert in Continental literature, of course, but the only other novel I know which uses the European Commission as a backdrop is “What happens in Brussels stays in Brussels” by the Maltese author Ġuże’ Stagno. And that’s more a satire on Maltese politics and the Maltese representatives in the EU, than a novel on the European institutions themselves.

Menasse’s work takes a wider view. Its central plot element is a “Big Jubilee Project” which is being organised by the Commission as a celebration of the anniversary of its founding. Ambitious EU official Fenia Xenapoulou hopes that this will be an occasion to improve the image of the Commission, whilst providing her with her big break. Fenia’s Austrian assistant Martin Susman comes up with the noble idea of roping in Holocaust survivors, as a reminder that the European Union was built to ensure that Auschwitz would “never happen again”. Unsurprisingly, as the organizers will discover to their chagrin, national interests and behind-the-scenes lobbying make the success of such an ambitious celebration unlikely.

Much as I enjoyed this novel, I must say that it took me some time to finally get immersed in it. This is certainly not the fault of the translation – I’ve previously enjoyed Bulloch’s translations of The Mussel-Feast and Look Who’s Back, and as in those novels, The Capital is rendered in prose that is idiomatic and flowing. I believe the problem is more with its sheer number of characters (a recent theatrical adaptation involved 7 actors playing about 20 roles) – in the initial chapters especially, I thought that an introductory dramatis personae would have been helpful as a guide to the somewhat bewildering international cast.

Another issue is with the proliferation of seemingly unrelated subplots involving, amongst other narrative complications: a pig on the loose in Brussels; a retired Professor preparing to deliver a final, memorable speech; a Holocaust survivor coming to terms with his impending death; a number of potential, never-fully-realised love stories and, more weirdly, a crime investigation which seems to have been borrowed from a Dan Brown thriller. More frustratingly, some of these loose ends are never tied up.

In other words, The Capital is a sprawling novel which could have done with some tightening. However, its polyphonic narrative is, in itself, a good metaphor for the European Union, this patchwork of nations and cultures which, somehow, managed to build a future of hope from the cinders of a continent ravaged by war. Indeed, this novel, despite its several comic and surreal elements, provides Menasse with the springboard to present his views on the European Union. Despite the evident shortcomings, the bureaucracy and the backstabbing which seem to characterize the working of its institutions, especially the Commission, the central idea(l) of the EC remains a laudable one – the creation of a supra-national body to keep extreme nationalism in check, in order to ensure that the horrors of the 20th Century do no happen again. In the age of Brexit and strident populism, its themes urgently relevant.

This book is full of food for thought and irony, the right mix that can makes you laugh, or think, or do both at the same time.
I loved how the writer look at the European Community, the bureaucracy, and the people who are part of the whole structure.
This book is multilayered, as a lot of good books, and you can choose which one you prefer.
It was a really good reading experience, I will surely look for other books by this writer.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to Quercus Books and Netgalley for this ARC. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book, all opinions are mine.

‘Something cannot fall apart without there having been connections.’

Winner of the 2017 German Book Award, Robert Menasse’s novel gets a timely English translation amidst the chaos (in the UK political establishment, at least) of Brexit. Not that it gets much of a mention, which is no bad thing. Instead, this is an insider’s view of what Europe means, of how it runs, of its ambitions and tensions keeping so many different nations together with compromises.

Here we have a disparate collection of characters, whose stories overlap and intersect in subtle and different ways. Characters pass each other in the street, see each other through a window, hear about each other – but they may not actually meet. For some these various strands of stories may be frustrating, wanting a nice neat overarching story with a beginning, middle and end. But, given that the European project is indeed a collection of different states, of different languages and customs, I think this is an entirely apt approach to the narrative by Austrian-born Menasse, and for me it works superbly well. Here we have European Commission workers trying to some up with a grand project to celebrate 50 years of the establishing of the Commission; a Holocaust survivor forced to give up his own apartment and move into a retirement home; pig farmers up in arms over trade deals with China to export pigs’ ears; an assassin and a world-weary cop playing cat and mouse… Each of these stories mix with each other – some, perhaps, more successfully than others. And throughout it all is a pig, running loose on the streets of Brussels and which itself becomes a ‘universal metaphor’ discussed and debated in the press.

There are many fine moments of comedy, and of confusion. There are moments of interaction between characters that all add layers to the ambition of the European project: characters caught having to translate between others, angst over national identity and a European supra-nationalism, an idea to build a new European capital city in Auschwitz, and many more. There is tragedy, too, and the very real threat of terrorism. Connections. There is a fair amount of jargon and farce that writes itself, as we get tangled up in the endless bureaucracy of the EU institution, but this is not, for all its satirical broadsides, and anti-European novel. On the contrary, it is a clarion call for compromise, for togetherness, for without it we are somehow lessened.

I really enjoyed this, and I also think it’s an important and serious work. Thoroughly recommended, whichever side of the European fence you happen to sit. 4 and a bit stars.

(With thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an ARC of the book.)

There's something very European about this novel which exudes a sensibility that a British novelist just doesn't have. Partly it's stylistic, the mix of satire, farce and something more serious epitomized by the PR campaign to make Auschwitz the heart of the EC jubilee: an idea both grotesque and yet, oddly, moving as the European project for supranational unity was launched in the wake of the Holocaust and the devastation of WW2.

Menasse has a sharp eye for career bureaucrats and creaking processes but never loses his sense of perspective and fun. The ensemble cast and the weaving connections between them keep us on our toes but there's affection here, too, and a fundamental belief in democracy as challenging but build on a commitment to discussion and debate rather than the flouncing off in a huff that is Brexit.

The assassin plot strand seems to have wandered in from another book and the whole thing could be tightened up - but beneath the fun is an important issue about the goodwill of the European project, where it came from and what it means still.

A timely and somewhat satirical look at the intricacies of the European Commission and the wider European political establishment as a whole, whilst Britain struggles to make sense of the decision to leave our European friends and how best to do so. It's a weaving together of seemingly unrelated subplots, which are barmy to say the least, and an adventure through the life of an organisation comprised for the greater good and its association with our identity. Winner of the German Book Prize, The Capital is entertainingly bizarre, in a similar vein to Balzac's The Human Comedy, and although it is a work of fiction it very much reflects the complexities of real life.

It highlights the inane tedium of everyday life and what happens when so many egotistical politicians come together in a single location. Using fiction as a device to provide social and political commentary, Menasse gets away with his often harsh criticism; at least more so than he might've through a work of nonfiction. Translated from German by Jamie Bulloch, it's a seamless transition and goes rather unnoticed - a sign of a very proficient translator - and provocatively pleads with readers to remember the reasons the European project began.

Many thanks to MacLehose Press for an ARC.

Here it is: The first major novel about the inner workings of European politics in our capital, Brussels. While the tone is often light and ironic, this book is whip-smart when it dissects the many conflict lines that we are struggling with in the EU, on a continent steeped in blood, where history is always also personal history and different views collide all. the. time. Democracy means to acknowledge and handle conflict, and to do that is sometimes hard - so hard in fact, that some people seem to think that nationalism, isolationism, or authoritarianism are the solution (yeah, why not repeat the same mistakes ad inifinitum? *sigh*). But the majority of EU citizens, especially young people all over the continent, want the European project to succeed - the EU didn't receive the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing.

Menasse, an Austrian, turns the people within the apparatus - who in the news mostly remain anonymous and are referred to as "bureaucrats", "lobbyists", and "experts" - into the protagonists of this tale. They have different backgrounds, their families are affected differently by European history (there is an Italian count, a Greek Cypriot, a Holocaust survivor, a Czech EU worker whose sister marries a right-wing, anti-EU politician and many others), they represent national governments or entities with different interests and many work within EU departments with conflicting aims (this might at first sound surprising, but it's normal even on the national and the state level: The Minister for Economy often has different aims than the Minister for the Environment, for example). On top of that, there's always the human factor: Many characters are in career politics, they have personal goals and power tactics - this is European "House of Cards".

There are two main narrative strands that hold the story together and connect the cast of characters: The Big Jubilee Project that aims to improve the image of the Commission, and a conflict over a trade deal with China concerning pigs - so we are dealing with bread-and-butter trade policy and the PR aspect of the EU. Anyone who is familiar with the inner workings of politics (on any level) will recognize classic dynamics here, but they are complicated by the factor of different countries joining in. Menasse's genius is to fill these discussions, that some people might suspect to be dry, with life by showing what's at stake for the individuals involved, how all of this relates to their personal history, how they are torn between the European mission (most of them are no cynics, but believers), national politics and personal vanity, and how the strict bureaucratic rules can deform people and stifle the vision that is so desperately needed.

Sometimes Menasse is overreaching a little: I wouldn't have needed the whole "criminal conspiracy" storyline, and the actual pig which might be running through or just reported to be running through Brussels is the reason why I refrained from reading this book for almost two years (in German, there is the term "eine neue Sau durchs Dorf treiben" (to chase a new sow through the village), which means that a topic gets hyped up and then dropped for a new topic, thus creating circles of discussions without any consequences). But all in all, this book is a real feat: We need stories like that to fill abstract concepts with life and stimulate discussion.

So I'm actually fine with this winning the German Book Prize 2017. And you can check out the #Europa22 campaign on twitter: Menasse lets one of his protagonists suggest European instead of national passports, and the Austrian band Bilderbuch just started a viral pro-EU campaign that features just that - all kinds of people already take part, from the German foreign minister to late night host Jan Böhmermann. You can also join the movement: https://bilderbucheuropa.love/

"This was about the Commission rather than “the E.U.”, it was about stripping the Commission of its image as an institution of unworldly bureaucrats and presenting it as guardian of the lessons of history and of human rights."

Robert Menasse's Die Hauptstadt won the German Book Prize, and has now been published in English as The Capital, ably translated by Jamie Bulloch.

Bulloch is perhaps best known as translator of The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke, winner of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German translation and shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. But, relevantly, he also translated the autobiography of Arsenal player (or rather non-playing large wage collector) Mesut Ozil and Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes.

Relevantly: as Robert is son of Austrian international footballer Hans Menasse, who came to England in 1938 as part of the Kindertransport before returning to Austria in 1947, where he won 2 caps and the league title.  And because this book, as with Vermes's, is perhaps more noteworthy for its political messaging and satire, albeit here more gentle, than for its purely literary content.

Indeed Menasse is also author of the non-fictional Der Europäische Landbote. Die Wut der Bürger und der Friede Europa, a brief polemic of his views on the future of Europe written while researching this novel. The German title is a reference to Büchner’s Hessischer Landbote, a pamphlet aimed against social grievances in the then Grand Duchy of Hesse. The English title, although rather less elegant, gives a strong indication of the content: Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits: Or Why the Democracy Given to Us Must Become One We Fight For. For Menasse, this democratic deficit results from the contradiction between the ideal of a European Union and the reality of the continuing concentration of power with the nation states and the Council of Ministers. From an interview promoting this novel:

"There is evidence of an unproductive contradiction that can no longer be kept in balance by compromise: the contradiction between post-national development – the conscious shaping of which was the EU’s objective, after all – and the growing resistance of the nation states, the renationalisation of the politics of the member states and of the consciousness of increasing numbers of voters."

And the novel quotes the teachings of an (I think fictitious) economics professor Armand Moens:

"The growing interlinking and interdependence of economies, the ever-expanding power of multinationals and the increasing significance of international financial markets would no longer allow national democracies to fulfil their essential tasks: intervening to shape the conditions in which people had to live their lives, and generally ensuring distributive justice."

Having said the novel is more political than literary, Menasse does have two key references. First he draws inspiration for his rather sprawling tale from Balzac's La Comédie humaine - he has suggested The Capital could form the basis for 'la tragicomédie européenne'. And Musil's magnificent The Man Without Qualities is explicitly referenced in The Capital. The latter documents the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and may at first seem an odd choice given that Menasse is clearly very pro-Europe. Again from an interview:

"The EU is doubly fascinating: it is the first political system that was not created as a result of the dynamism of productive forces and evolved, but that was founded as a lesson learnt from historical experiences. Even in terms of its approach it is more enlightened than any form of blind rule in history. At the same time, the EU is the only political project worldwide that already constitutes a logical systemic answer to the future that is taking place, namely globalisation."

But the conclusion of Menasse's non-fiction book was that the current EU set-up is a doomed project: "Either the Europe of nation states will founder, or the project of overcoming the nation-state will". He instead advocates a "post-national Europe based on the subsidiary principle of the regions".

The Capital itself is set within the walls of the EU Commission, and the multi-national staff that work there. A key aim of the novel is to show the human side of the faceless Brussels bureaucrats that are so often blamed for the Continent's ills. Per Menasse:

Most people see the EU merely as something very abstract, something erratic that has no face, and not as something that one can actually imagine in any sensory form.
...
That was the goal: to give the EU a face.

In The Man Without Qualities, Ulrich gets caught up in the "Parallel Campaign”, a project to plan the celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the Emperor in 1918, the 'parallel' a reference to the rival campaign in Germany to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Wilhelm II in the same year.

In The Capital, the Culture directorate of the Commission decides to create a similar project - to celebrate the 50th anniversary, not of the EU in general, but of the Commission specifically, and with a certain rivalry to the Parliament, and, particularly, Council of Ministers. The project is motivated by falling ratings in the latest Eurobarometer surveys:

"Fifty-nine per cent of respondents thought the Commission “meddles in issues that would be better dealt with at national level”, but only 5 per cent agreed that it “performs its functions poorly”. They needed to understand this contradiction. She wondered why none of her predecessors had criticised the Eurobarometer methodology and implemented a change. If you give people the option of putting a cross beside “meddles in issues that would be better dealt with at national level”then a certain percentage will do precisely that. These Yes-it’s-true types, those That’s-what-I-always-say idiots! But if you were to propose a statement to the effect that the Commission protects citizens from injustices that arise from the differences between national legal systems, the result would be quite different.

[...]

Was there something like a birthday for the Commission? The day of its founding? And this was the idea: it wasn’t enough to sell the day-to-day work of the Commission as positively as possible; it had to be honoured, people had to be encouraged to celebrate the very fact of its existence, they shouldn’t simply be begging for acceptance, or rectifying clichés, or challenging rumours and myths. For once the Commission should be placed in the spotlight, not talked about in abstract and general terms as “the E.U.”. What was the E.U., anyway? Various institutions all pursuing their own agenda, but if there was any point to the whole thing then it was down to the existence of the Commission, which stood for the whole thing, didn’t it?"

And the idea for the project converges, controversially, on Auschwitz, which the Commission staff see as the inspiration for the birth of a European community transcending national states.

"Ultimately the Commission’s poor profile was down to the fact that it was seen as the apparatus of a mere economic community, which stood for an economic policy that was being rejected by ever greater numbers of people. Now there needed to be a permanent reminder of the fundamental European idea, in the words of Jean Monnet: “All our efforts are the lessons of our historical experience: nationalism leads to racism and war, and with dire logic to Auschwitz.”
[...]
The victims came from all over Europe, they all wore the same striped clothing, they all lived in the shadow of the same death, and all of them, those that survived, had the same desire: a guarantee that human rights would be respected, a guarantee that would be binding for ever more. Nothing in history has brought together the diverse identities, mentalities and cultures of Europe, the religions, the different so-called races and former hostile ideologies, nothing has created such a fundamental solidarity of all people as did the experience of Auschwitz. The nations, the national identities – all that was obsolete, whether you were a Spaniard or a Pole , Italian or Czech, Austrian, German or Hungarian, it was obsolete – religion, background, all of it was subsumed in a common desire: the wish to survive, the wish for a life in dignity and freedom."

[as an aside, the Spectator review makes the rather apposite counterpoint that if anything one lesson from Auschwitz was the need for a new nation state - the re-establishment of Israel]

The story of the shenanigans and political positioning within the Commission would make for a reasonable length novel, but Menasse has chosen to pack a lot more in, including:

- an elderly Holocaust survivor, who enters a retirement home. His comments on those already there function as an equal valid observation of the institutionalised Commission staff:

"They were so – de Vriend searched for a word – so . . . entrenched in this life. All had been here for some years, they knew the system, the structures, the customs, they had their contacts with the management and staff, they knew their way around and had made themselves at home."

- a story about pigs - one of which literally runs through the novel. European pig farming politics - with individual states trying to negotiate trade deals with China to sell pigs' ears in bulk - serves as a microcosm for Menasse's concerns with the EU:

"If the Union of European Pig Producers was going to fall apart, what point was there in taking on the responsibility? How absurd it was to want none of this but to take on the responsibility anyway. For what ? Just to act as a puppet for people with common interests who formed a community, only to wage relentless conflicts of interest within that community until the common interest was no more."

- a visiting academic who acts as something of a direct mouthpiece for Menasse's views

- a rather bizarre DanBrownesque subplot involving a philosophical Polish Catholic hitman:

"Starting at the point of their birth, a person can think back, back and back further, back into eternity, but they will never arrive at a beginning, and with their foolish concept of time will grasp only one thing: before they existed, for an eternity they did not exist. And they can think ahead, from the moment of their death to as far as they wish in the future, never reaching an end, but only this realisation: they will be no more for all eternity. And the interlude between eternity and eternity is time –the clamour, the hubbub, the stamping of machines, the drone of engines, the crash and bang of weapons, the chorales of the furious and happily betrayed masses, the rumble of thunder and terrified panting in the microscopic terrarium of the earth"

- and the high-level cover up of his 'hit' which the local police Detective decides to investigate independently even while well aware he is thus turning himself into a cliché:

"Yes, Brunfaut said, this will remain between us, just like in a T.V. crime series. I’m sorry? An order from the very top, Brunfaut said, a political intervention to obstruct the investigation, mysterious intimations, otherwise silence. It’s such a dreadful cliché, but of course the cliché has to be followed to its conclusion: by an inspector who feels compelled to strike out on his own ..."

Given Menasse has said in interviews that the novel ends with a terrorist bomb on the Brussels tube (a plot device he had decided on before a real-life bomb struck the exact same station), the reader rather expects these strands to converge in a There-There or In Our Mad and Furious City style movie ending. But while Menasse has his characters sometimes literally cross paths, he keeps the plotlines deliberately distinct:

"What significance do interrelationships, entanglements and connections have if those concerned know nothing of them?"

The Brexit vote came while the novel was being written, but doesn't feature to any great extent, Although Menasse can't resist the odd swipe, particularly at a fictional senior UK official in the Commission (and one who shares David Cameron's alleged porcine proclivities - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate):

"Kai-Uwe Frigge knew, of course, why Morland was resisting any further development of Community policy: first and foremost he was a Brit, not a European, and within the Commission he wasn’t a European official, but a British official in the European civil service. And it was Great Britain’s iron policy to prevent further transfer of national sovereignty to Brussels, however minor. With E.U. money they restored Manchester, which had fallen into total disrepair, but rather than express their gratitude they see the spruced-up façades of the city as proof that Manchester Capitalism will henceforth vanquish all competitors. This bloated, perfumed pig no doubt began his day by singing “Rule Britannia!”with his early-morning tea."

Although for those working at the Commission, Brexit mainly means that senior portfolios will fortuitously become available in the next reshuffle. Which rather sums up the abiding note of this book - for all the political messages and suspense, it's ultimately Yes Commissioner.

A difficult book to rate - I wavered between 2- (for literary merit) and 4 stars (for interest as demonstrated by my review length) so settled on 3.