Danubia : A Personal History of Habsburg Europe

For hundreds of years a lot of Europe was within the palms of the very peculiar Habsburg household. An unstable combination of wizards, obsessives, melancholics, bores, musicians and warriors, they noticed off – by way of luck, guile and sheer mulishness – any variety of rivals, till lastly packing up in 1918. From their principal lairs alongside the Danube they dominated most of Central Europe and Germany and interfered in all places – certainly the historical past of Europe hardly is smart with out them.

Simon Winder’s extraordinarily humorous new guide plunges the reader right into a maelstrom of alchemy, skeletons, jewels, bear-moats, unlucky marriages and a guinea-pig village. Danubia is stuffed with music, piracy, faith and preventing. It’s the historical past of a dynasty, however it’s at the very least as a lot in regards to the folks they dominated, who spoke many alternative languages, lived in an enormous vary of landscapes, believed in lots of rival gods and sometimes confirmed a marked ingratitude in direction of their oddball ruler in Vienna. Readers who found Simon Winder’s genius for telling fantastic tales of center Europe with Germania will likely be delighted by the eccentric and engaging tales of the Habsburgs and their world.

Danubia was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2013.