In the Forest of Metropoles

A chronicle of the diversity and wealth of cultures, predominantly from Eastern Europe, that have played a formative role in shaping contemporary Europe but now risk being forgotten. A Herodotus of Mitteleuropa, cultural historian Karl-Markus Gau-is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the breadth and complexities of cultures and societies in Europe before, during, and after its decades of division in the twentieth century. In this book, Gau-takes his readers on a thirteen-station journey across Europe. From Brussels to Istanbul and from Naples to Opole, Gau-weaves a Sebaldian web of connection and coincidence into a hybrid cultural history. Significantly, Gau-s metropoles are not the well-trodden, thoroughly explored, and minutely documented megalopolises and cultural capitals that have been mythologized by writers great and small. There are no visits to Berlin, Paris, Rome, or Madrid, although he does make time for Vienna, where he looks not for imperial remnants, but fo