What you will find are ambitious, unscrupulous climbers up the Berlaymont ladder and folk of an integrity sometimes verging on the naive. It's also educational: did you, for instance, know that the Commission's department for culture is a graveyard for careerists, since it gets a tiny budget? Don't expect much timewasting on Brexit, though - all you learn is that for most EU employees other than the Brits it's a side issue. But it would be wrong to pigeonhole this masterwork of literature as merely a satire, or taking a sideswipe at the EU, funny though it can be. Inevitably there's more than a whiff of the satirical about Menasse's handling of 'Brussels bureaucracy'. The obvious attribution holds good until a surprising twist. 'The Capital' ('Die Hauptstadt' in the original language - it won the German Book Prize in 2017) seems to imply the main centre of EU activities and its headquarters, the Berlaymont building on Rue de la Loi.

Austrian Robert Menasse's novel is the first I've read to bring to life the complexity of such a difficult balance, and to root it in Brussels (though there are also scenes in Vienna, Krakow - and Auschwitz). At the heart of a cast as diverse as the union itself is Fenia Xenapoulou, a Greek Cypriot recently 'promoted' to the Department of Culture, who hopes to revamp the European Commission's image by proclaiming Auschwitz as its birthplace with the 'Big Jubilee Project.' Other tragic heroes, clever schemers, and involuntary accomplices are intricately woven, revealing the absurdities-and real dangers-of a fiercely nationalistic 'union.' Mordantly funny and piercingly urgent, The Capital, the winner of Germany's highest fiction prize, is an 'elegantly written, beautifully constructed' ( Die Zeit) feat of world literature.She also saw the difficulties ahead in holding the centre of European solidarity over and above the immediate national concerns of the Union's members. The resulting novel has become an international sensation, translated from German into more than twenty languages and deemed 'the first great EU novel' ( Politico). Set on capturing the elusive inner workings of the European Union, Robert Menasse, one of Austria's most creative thinkers, moved to the EU's headquarters in Brussels for an enthralling, wine-soaked tour of supranational institutions.

Robert menasse the capital