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Grote Europese roman
Great European Novel

The novel that saves Europe

Finally. After the Great American Novel we can now read the Great European Novel. 
A book with as many chapters as there are European capital cities. A biting quest for happiness. The Great European Novel describes how we, strangers, can find each another anyway in conference centres, airports and hotels. How we, Europeans, feel each other out with language. How some secrets can only be confided to people we’ve never met before or to people we’ll never meet again. Robin is looking for all-consuming love, Theo is being driven along by his past. They work in marketing, advertising, promotional gifts. And Theo is Robin’s boss. One more contrast: Robin is promising and impatient, Theo is the wise, sad boss who has had everything. Yes, everything. They are businessmen. But ever since the Nine Eleven television pictures, showing ordinary office employees in New York covered in ashes or being lost in them, they are heroes.
In Prague Robin meets a golem, in Budapest he goes for a swim, in Warsaw he sleeps with Agnieszka. In Brussels Robin finally meets the one and only. The one and only? Yes, he finds the one and only in a volcanic way. In the mean time Theo’s secret is being revealed slowly but surely: an old war story. While the world is a flourishing place for Robin, it is slowly and tragically closing in on Theo.


About the author
Koen Peeters (°1959) was awarded the New Yang prize for his debut, Conversations with K. Subsequent works include Visit Our Cellars, The Postman (NCR prize), It isn’t Serious, Mon Amour (Province of Flemish Brabant’s Literature Prize), Acacia Lane (long list AKO Literature Prize), Mr Shaman. In 2005 his highlypraised poetic debut Fine Motor System was published.


Why Great European Novel is a modern classic:
‘Great European Novel is a wonderful, witty European jigsaw puzzle, a literary Monopoly that will keep you enthralled for days. A book with the light lustre of nostalgia and banal happiness, subtly enhanced by the great breath of history’ — De Morgen
‘Great European Novel is a really lovely book, modest and ambitious, cheerful and grave, which deserves translation in every country where the story takes place’ —  Jacques de Decker in Le Soir
‘A revelation. Reading a story like this one makes you happy.’ — Alessandro Piperno in Corriere Della Serra


Read the sample translation of Great European Novel in English
Read the sample translation of Great European Novel in Italian
Read the sample translation of Great European Novel in Spanish


Fiction, Literary fiction
296 pages

Original title: Grote Europese Roman

Slovenian rights sold to Modrijan
Bulgarian rights sold to Colibri
Hungarian rights sold to Gondolat
Italian rights sold to Duepunti Ediozioni

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