Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Danubia: Personal History of Habsburg Europe
Author: WINDER SIMON
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 25/02/2020
Imprint: PICADOR
Price: $20.00
Publishing status: Active
For centuries much of Europe was in the hands of the very peculiar Habsburg family. An unstable mixture of wizards, obsessives, melancholics, bores, musicians and warriors, they saw off – through luck, guile and sheer mulishness – any number of rivals, until finally packing up in 1918. From their principal lairs along the Danube they ruled most of Central Europe and Germany and interfered everywhere – indeed the history of Europe hardly makes sense without them.
Simon Winder’s extremely funny new book plunges the reader into a maelstrom of alchemy, skeletons, jewels, bear-moats, unfortunate marriages and a guinea-pig village. <i>Danubia</i> is full of music, piracy, religion and fighting. It is the history of a dynasty, but it is at least as much about the people they ruled, who spoke many different languages, lived in a vast range of landscapes, believed in many rival gods and often showed a marked ingratitude towards their oddball ruler in Vienna. Readers who discovered Simon Winder’s genius for telling wonderful stories of middle Europe with <i>Germania</i> will be delighted by the eccentric and fascinating stories of the Habsburgs and their world.
<i>Danubia</i> was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2013.
ISBN: 9781529026160
Dimension: 197mm X 130mm
Pages: 464