Looking for new reading material? Want to engage with readers from all over the world? Want to discover books from emerging fiction writers? Join us for a digital EUPL Book Club!
Our next book club discussion will revolve around travel, where we will follow our protagonists on a road trip across Europe, or get to experience cities and regions from the perspective of different characters. Our next chat will be hosted on 26 August, and we are excited to organise this event in partnership with Lit Cities - an exciting digital initiative compling a database of novels that unveil the magic of urban tales and equip the reader with a feeling for a city‘s inhabitants, their habits and idiosyncrasies. Lit Cities is the cultural hub for the world of literature and the poetic dimension of travelling.
We will be joined by EUPL 2020 winning author Stavros Christodoulou for our next discussion on 26 August. Join in by sending us your questions on our social channels by using #EUPLbookclub or through our Book Club group on Facebook.
Listen to the discussion below:
As usual, we are spotlighting three EUPL winning novels – to be able to participate in the book club, you only need to read one:
Death drives an Audi (Døden kører Audi) by Kristian Bang Foss
Asger lives with his girlfriend and her daughter in Copenhagen and works for an advertising agency. It’s 2008, the credit crunch has just begun to bite, and after leading a catastrophic campaign Asger is fired. He spends his days lying on the sofa, developing problems with both his weight and alcohol. His girlfriend breaks up with him and he moves to a flat in Sydhavn, losing contact with everybody. Half a year later, he is forced to take on a job as a disabled carer in Stentofte, a dreary concrete suburb of Copenhagen, looking after a sick man called Waldemar. Their daily life together is a study in hopelessness. But Waldemar has a plan: he wants to go and see a healer in Morocco. Asger is sceptical, but nevertheless he helps Waldemar raise money for the journey, and after a while the two friends find themselves on a road trip through Europe. However, they are being followed by a person in a black Audi – and as they get closer to Morocco, the trip turns into a race with death.
The son (Sin) by Andrej Nikolaidis
The Son follows one night in the life of a hero with no name, a writer whose life is falling apart. That afternoon, his wife left him, while for many years he has been in conflict with his father, who blames him for his mother’s death. Incapable of finding inner calm, he leaves into the warm, Mediterranean night, in the city of Ulcinj, itself a multilayered mixture of European dimensions, African influences, and the communist past. The hero of The Son is a man who can’t adapt to new times and rules. On his journey into the night, he meets an assortment of characters: a piano student from Vienna who has abandoned his musical career and converted to Islam, a radical Christian preacher and a group of refugees from Kosovo. In the style of Mihail Bulgakov, the characters meet in the old city of Ulcinj, at the Square of the Slaves – a location where the pirates who lived in the city until the 19th century would bring and sell captured slaves, including Miguel de Cervantes, according to legend.
The day the river froze (Τη μέρα που πάγωσε ο ποταμός) by Stavros Christodoulou
Budapest, February 12, 1985. In the bitter cold, the river freezes over and a prophecy that sounds like a croak marks the birth of Janos: ‘bad seed, bad tidings’. Twenty-seven years later, the man who the oracle confirmed as ‘Janos the Hungarian’ is arrested in Athens as the chief suspect in the murder of famous painter Miltos Andrianos. Could this be another crime typical of the sex intrigues of male prostitution rings? Journalist Stratos Papadopoulos begins to unravel the thread of history, delving into the lives of other people, whose paths sometimes lead to and cross in the margins of Athens’ new reality. Amongst the key figures in this mystery: a 60-year-old widow involved in a love affair with the Hungarian man, his wife, with whom he has a son, the offspring of a powerful political family associated with the painter, a secretive police officer and a shady figure from the underworld. In Stavros Christodoulou’s novel, no one seems above suspicion, while the truth is hidden, as always, in the details. As the mystery unfolds, the grey waters of the Danube carry away the stories of those whose only desire was to be loved.
