Mitteleuropa book pre-order (out 26th June)

350 page illustrated paperback book of 14 creative non-fiction essays about the places, people, literature, film and essential weirdness of Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary, percolated through spending fifteen years working in those countries.

Standard paperback size. Out 26th June 2025. 
Ebook version will be emailed out to pre-orders.

Optional A5 or A4 Kafka giclée print bundle (print also available separately).

**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, Georg Trakl and bad home-made taxidermy

Alpenmilch
The Alps, chocolate factories, South Tyrol, Wittgenstein 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, the assassination of Heydrich, 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 and the sea: Dittmarschen: no masters, no leaders, no kings, no hills, Otto Waalkes and the Ottiphants, field recordings in swamps and canals, salmiakki, genuine soil samples from Wacken metal fest, the Baltic coast and Prora resort, Gunter Grass, Gdansk and Kaliningrad.

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

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 80s and 2000s, Goethe, Ottfried Preussler, Christa Wolf and modern day Helmstedt and Schöningen

Under the Weißwurst Equator
The south: Ludwig II of Bavaria and his addiction to building baroque palaces, Munich, Passau, Kaspar Hauser, Werner Herzog, Michael Ende and the Neverending Story, Dachau, the rise of the Nazis

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

Goulash Communism & New Wave
Poets and revolutionaries, the 1848 revolution, and listening to Leonard Cohen in Budapest. 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 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**
Money Laundering and False Teeth
Central Europe’s premiere microstate, full of money laundering, €5 crisps, modern art, Balzers castle and seeing the entire country via the no 14 bus.