Europe Central

Authors: William Vollmann

Tags: #Germany - Social Life and Customs, #Soviet Union - Social Life and Customs, #General, #Literary, #Germany, #Historical, #War & Military, #Fiction, #Soviet Union

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

VIEW FROM A RUINED ROMANIAN FORT

STEEL IN MOTION

PINCER MOVEMENTS

THE SAVIORS: A KABBALISTIC TALE

MOBILIZATION

WOMAN WITH DEAD CHILD

YOU HAVE SHUT THE DANUBE’S GATES

ELENA’S ROCKETS

MAIDEN VOYAGE

WHEN PARZIVAL KILLED THE RED KNIGHT

OPUS 40

OPERATION MAGIC FIRE

AND I’D DRY MY SALTY HAIR

CASE WHITE

OPERATION BARBAROSSA

THE SLEEPWALKER

THE PALM TREE OF DEBORAH

UNTOUCHED

FAR AND WIDE MY COUNTRY STRETCHES

BREAKOUT

THE LAST FIELD-MARSHAL

WE’LL NEVER MENTION IT AGAIN

WHY WE DON’T TALK ABOUT FREYA ANYMORE

OPERATION WOLUND

OPUS 110

A PIANIST FROM KILGORE

LOST VICTORIES

THE WHITE NIGHTS OF LENINGRAD

SOURCES

AN IMAGINARY LOVE TRIANGLE: SHOSTAKOVICH, KARMEN, KONSTANTINOVSKAYA

Acknowledgements

ALSO BY WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN

You Bright and Risen Angels
The Rainbow Stories
The Ice-Shirt
Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs
Whores for Gloria
Fathers and Crows
Butterfly Stories
The Rifles
An Afghanistan Picture Show
The Atlas
The Royal Family
Argall
Rising Up and Rising Down

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. ■ Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) ■ Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England ■ Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) ■ Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) ■ Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India ■ Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) ■ Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2005 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Portions of this work first appeared in
Conjunctions, Grand Street, Film Comment, The New Yorker, The Paris Review,
and
Expelled from Eden: A William T. Vollmann Reader,
edited by William T. Vollmann, Larry McCaffery, and Michael Hemmingson (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005).

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Vollmann, William T.

Europe central / by William T. Vollmann. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-11819-1

1. Germany—Social life and customs—Fiction. 2. Soviet Union—Social life and customs—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3572.O395E97 2005

813’.54—dc22 2004061170

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Map by the author

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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This book is dedicated to the memory of Danilo Kis, whose masterpiece
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
kept me company for many years
while I was preparing to write this book.