Robert Menasse - A főváros

In 2017, Robert Menasse's new novel received the most eagerly awaited German Book Award in German literary life every year.

The book's characters come from different countries in Europe, people with different mentalities, social and cultural backgrounds, including a cold, calculating careerist, an enthusiastic idealist, a pragmatic-minded professional, a cynical scoundrel, a killing machine and a beautiful soul, Greek, English, German, Walloon and Flemish, Polish and Hungarian, Christian and Jewish. Their personal history, pre-history, the development of their destiny, their different mentality and culture confirm or even extinguish their intentions. This is how the world works, and this is how Europe, including the European Union, works in it. In his work, written with his characteristic sarcasm and irony, but at the same time with infinite seriousness, Menasse describes the end of an era, of a Europe in which so much good happened, which gave so much hope and security, and which is currently being destroyed. If we are not careful.
The decision of the jury of the German Book Prize is indisputable: in his masterpiece, the Vienna-born author, a major master of German-language literature, created a completely new genre: the European novel.
The author is not unknown among Hungarian readers either.