This daring novel explores the Central European consciousness and the question of why contemporary Europeans, with all their achievements, feel so hopeless.

Northern Renaissance follows the fates of two generations of a family living in Germany and the Czech Republic. Zábranský uses this topic as a backdrop against which to examine the sociocultural relationship between the two countries and, more broadly, the current prevailing attitude towards life in Central Europe. This is a novel about Europe today, the migrant crisis and cultures growing disparate: younger and older. It is a novel about the deep, often forgotten, division of Europe, and the continents’ physical split into the north and the south by the Alps. Northern Renaissance examines barriers in many forms, in an attempt to answer the question of how far unified Europe has come and what will happen next. What is the European vision? What is behind Brexit and the rising populism in many European countries? As a continent, are we on our way to the summit, on the summit, or already beyond?

Praise

“An exceptional feat in the journalistic novel category. Zábranský knows how to write a story like fly-paper sticks – his writing is simply catchy.”

—Literární noviny

“In his new book, David Zábranský doesn’t shrink from opening a great many locked doors.”

—iLiteratura