Mitteleuropa book pre-order (out April)

280 page illustrated paperback book of 18 travel writing essays about Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary + 48 page colour photo booklet.

Standard paperback size. Out April 2025. 
Ebook version will be emailed out to pre-orders.

**Austria**
Wiener Blut
Habsburgs, The Cold War, Freud, Schiele, Hundertwasser, art school (and why they rejected Hitler) Stefan Zweig and Falco

Carnival and Sautanz
Small town carnivals, Burgenland: the Kansas of Austria, Krampus, and Austria’s Catholic Fascism era pre-Anschluss

Real Life Zelda
Caves, salt mines, herbs, the platonic idea of the Austrian pub, quests and bad home-made taxidermy

Alpenmilch
The Alps, chocolate factories, South Tyrol and hearing the Last Unicorn theme tune play in the supermarket in Graz

**Czechia & Slovakia**

Kafka Himself
The OG Sad Boi, a small circle of Prague, Czech punk, and literary eating

Puppets of Prague
Stop motion animation, black light theatre, Jan Švankmajer, Jiři Trunka, Zdeněk Miler and why you should beware of potatoes in the cellar

Xanadu
Bratislava, the Cold War secrets of the Big Tesco, halls of mirrors, and mirages on the horizon

**Germany **
The Proud Republic of the Swamp
The North: Dittmarschen: no masters, no leaders, no kings, no hills, Otto Waalkes and the Ottiphants, field recordings in swamps and canals, salmiakki and genuine soil samples from Wacken metal fest.

Kling Klang
The West: Kraftwerk, Can, the Rheinland and Baader-Meinhof gang, why Bielefeld doesn’t exist and a disastrous trip to Documenta 14

Prussian Pigs
The former: the rise of Prussia, the Baltic coast and Prora resort, Loriot, Gdansk and Kaliningrad.

Lignite
The East: Cheap nasty coal, life in the former DDR, the Stasi, 1980s Dresden, Ostalgia, the former Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt, Berlin in the 2000s, and modern day Magdeburg and Schöningen

Under the Weißwurst Equator
The south: Ludwig II of Bavaria and his addiction to building baroque palaces, Munich, Passau, Kaspar Hauser, Gunter Grass, Michael Ende and the Neverending Story

Vergangenheitsbewältigung
Goethe and Faust, visiting Dachau and Mauthausen, and Primo Levi. East and West Germany and Austria’s attempts (or lack of them) to come to terms with the Nazi era and Holocaust.

**Hungary**
The Versailles of Hungary
The mirror-world of the Austria-Hungary border, how the Hungarian language works, discount dentists and Viktor Orbán.

Like Petőfi in the Fog
Poets and revolutionaries, the 1848 revolution, and listening to Leonard Cohen in Budapest.

Terrorháza
Hungarian fascism, the 1956 Revolution and Khrushchev’s reaction, and touring the former secret police headquarters with the world’s most annoying American Army Dad

Goulash Communism & New Wave
Working in Budapest in the late 2000s, 70s and 80s Hungary, Hungarian New Wave music, and being trapped on a 80s Hungarian Pop karaoke party on a boat on the Danube

**Liechtenstein**
Central Europe’s premiere microstate, full of money laundering, €5 crisps, modern art, Balzers castle and seeing the entire country via the no 11 bus.