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Grand Hotel Europa cover art

Grand Hotel Europa

By: Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Michele Hutchison
Narrated by: John Sackville
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Summary

The international best seller

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s moving and addictive masterpiece of European identity, nostalgia and the end of an era.

‘The love of my life lives in my past. That is, despite the alliteration, a terrible sentence to write. I do not want to come to the conclusion that, as it is the case for the hotel where I am staying and the continent after which it is named, the best time is behind me and that I have little more to expect from the future than to live on my past.’ 

A writer takes residence in the illustrious but decaying Grand Hotel Europa, to think about where things went wrong with Clio, with whom he fell in love in Genoa and moved to Venice. He reconstructs a compelling story of love in times of mass tourism, about their trips to Malta, Palmaria, Portovenere and the Cinque Terre and their thrilling search for the last painting of Caravaggio. Meanwhile, he becomes fascinated by the mysteries of Grand Hotel Europe and gets more and more involved with the memorable characters who inhabit it, and who seem to come from a more elegant time. All the while, globalisation seems to be grabbing hold even on this place frozen in time.

Grand Hotel Europa is Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s masterly novel on the old continent, where so much history resides that there is no place left for a future and where the most realistic future perspectives are offered in the form of exploiting the past in the shape of tourism.

©2018 Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers

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Ambitious and Enlightening

This is excellent stuff, brilliantly told - from the writing itself, to the translator and the narrator. A real treasure trove of reflections on life, art, civilisation and the nature of a doomed relationship. Highly recommended.

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  • Overall
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Probably better in printed book form

This is the first time that performance of the narrator has got in the way of my enjoyment of the actual story. I - without proper reason - took against the tambour, pitch and performance of the reader-out-louder (can’t remember his name already, sorry) and from that small splinter irritation grew a sense of dread at having to get through this book. It’s not that it was performed badly, possibly it did not match with the voice that would have bought the words alive for me. It’s very subjective and possibly will not be the same for others.

I bought it thinking “17 hours - oh good!”. And counted down each hour of listening with “16, 15, 14… etc - oh God!”

But now it is read and grateful it is so. It bought me little joy.

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