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A review by pageglue
Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
How to describe Dead Europe? Think the morals (and prejudices) of Heart of Darkness, the sick indulgences of American Psycho (though less intense and frequent), and the dark travelogue of The Beach.
Tsiolkas takes the tropes and prejudices that white Europeans and the diaspora hold towards other ethnic groups and turns them back on Europe and her colonies (mainly Australia in this case). This inversion depicts Europe’s promise of riches and high culture as a lie by focusing on the poor, the wretched, sex workers, children who are kidnapped or sold into sex trafficking, and the civilians left to fend for themselves after wars / the fall of the USSR. We see a war torn landscape ruled by tyrants who tortured and murdered millions of people. We see the barbarity and superstitions of backwater folk religions in their filthy villages. The protagonist Isaac’s parents immigrated to Australia from Greece, his family and community have been ridiculed and branded with the racialised slur ‘wog’, and Isaac’s sojourn to his mother’s birthplace has many of the hallmarks of any other immigrant child’s experiences of being othered by the country they grew up in and the country they supposedly belong to. All of this was carried off very cleverly and effectively, though personally I don’t find calling out the hypocrisy of white supremacy to be very interesting - racists don’t care about being consistent - however I will credit Tsiolkas for his deft understanding of racial politics, a pretty rare thing in Australia.
This is a horror book which has a supernatural element, but it’s a pretty minor one. The real horror we see is Europe’s history, its antisemitism, and the on page depictions of the SA of children. This is truly a disgusting book that probably goes way further than it needed to. The stomach turning pedophilia, cannibalism, and antisemitism induces the disgust that one should feel towards the white supremacy that these things analogise, although I would argue Tsiolkas put the undereducated and exploited Eastern European peasant class in the cross hairs to do so.
The writing and characterisation were excellent, and good lord these characters are such awful, heinous people. The MC Isaac is a photographer and that was very relevant in the first half of the book, including with the Teju Cole-esque photographic writing style creating depth of field with the themes / characters or framing scenes in certain ways, but that was mostly forgotten in the second half. Each chapter switches between the present and the past revealing his family’s lore and how they came to be in Australia, and I didn’t enjoy the past timeline much. I was a bit disappointed with the way Isaac’s story ended.
As much as I enjoyed(?) this, I would only recommend it if you like reading fucked up shit.
Tsiolkas takes the tropes and prejudices that white Europeans and the diaspora hold towards other ethnic groups and turns them back on Europe and her colonies (mainly Australia in this case). This inversion depicts Europe’s promise of riches and high culture as a lie by focusing on the poor, the wretched, sex workers, children who are kidnapped or sold into sex trafficking, and the civilians left to fend for themselves after wars / the fall of the USSR. We see a war torn landscape ruled by tyrants who tortured and murdered millions of people. We see the barbarity and superstitions of backwater folk religions in their filthy villages. The protagonist Isaac’s parents immigrated to Australia from Greece, his family and community have been ridiculed and branded with the racialised slur ‘wog’, and Isaac’s sojourn to his mother’s birthplace has many of the hallmarks of any other immigrant child’s experiences of being othered by the country they grew up in and the country they supposedly belong to. All of this was carried off very cleverly and effectively, though personally I don’t find calling out the hypocrisy of white supremacy to be very interesting - racists don’t care about being consistent - however I will credit Tsiolkas for his deft understanding of racial politics, a pretty rare thing in Australia.
This is a horror book which has a supernatural element, but it’s a pretty minor one. The real horror we see is Europe’s history, its antisemitism, and the on page depictions of the SA of children. This is truly a disgusting book that probably goes way further than it needed to. The stomach turning pedophilia, cannibalism, and antisemitism induces the disgust that one should feel towards the white supremacy that these things analogise, although I would argue Tsiolkas put the undereducated and exploited Eastern European peasant class in the cross hairs to do so.
The writing and characterisation were excellent, and good lord these characters are such awful, heinous people. The MC Isaac is a photographer and that was very relevant in the first half of the book, including with the Teju Cole-esque photographic writing style creating depth of field with the themes / characters or framing scenes in certain ways, but that was mostly forgotten in the second half. Each chapter switches between the present and the past revealing his family’s lore and how they came to be in Australia, and I didn’t enjoy the past timeline much. I was a bit disappointed with the way Isaac’s story ended.
As much as I enjoyed(?) this, I would only recommend it if you like reading fucked up shit.