Epochal emissary

Writer-protagonist's stay in a dilapidated hotel can be read as allegory for a fading Europe.

- HELENA WIŚNIEWSKA BROW

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer: playing games with structure and reader expectations.

GRAND HOTEL EUROPA, by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (Fourth Estate, $35) [out May 4]

When Grand Hotel Europa was published in 2018 in the Netherlands, its depiction of life in a continent with its best behind it struck a chord with local readers.

“Europe is drowning in its history," author Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer warned. “There's so much past in Europe there's no space left for the future."

Four years on, it's an increasingly uncomfortable view. If Pfeijffer had chosen to update his bestseller for its English release, a global pandemic followed by the outbreak of war would make an unsurprising if depressing epilogue. It's lucky, then, that the novel, at 500-plus pages, is already full to the brim.