In the Midst of Civilized Europe
11 November 2021
Imprint: Picador
Synopsis
A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year
A riveting account of a forgotten holocaust: the slaughter of over one hundred thousand Ukrainian Jews in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. In the Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a defining moment of the twentieth century.
'Exhaustive, clearly written, deeply researched' – The Times
'A meticulous, original and deeply affecting historical...
Details
11 November 2021
885 minutes
Leighton Pugh
9781529059434
Imprint: Picador
Reviews
Veidlinger’s book ranks alongside Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands in forcing our eyes eastwards. It is deeply researched and masterfully written, with a cool restraint that only intensifies its power. It reminded me of Faulkner’s line that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”Patrick Bishop, Sunday Telegraph
[An] exhaustive, clearly written, deeply researched story of events in a time and place most of us know nearly nothing about - the pogroms of 1918-21 in Ukraine and Poland . . . [an] imortant and scholalry book.David Aaronovitch, The Times
We now know much more about the pogroms of 1918–21 because of Veidlinger’s painstaking research . . . he has succeeded in shining a bright scholarly light on a much less well-known attempt to exterminate European Jews two decades before the Holocaust. In its thoroughness and controlled passion, In the Midst of Civilized Europe is descriptive history at its best.David N Myers, Literary Review
Superbly researched . . . Jeffrey Veidlinger askes big historical questions that will change our understanding of the relation between pogroms immediately after the First World War and the Holocaust, barely twenty years later.David Herman, TLS