Summary of The Capital
Robert Menasse’s novel “The Capital” resolves around EU officials in Brussels who are planning a ‘Jubilee Project’ to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the European Commission. The novel features various eccentric characters, including an Austrian pig farmer, a retired economics professor, a Polish assassin who would have preferred to become a priest, and a Belgian police inspector who attempts to solve a murder case.
Reasons to read The Capital
“The Capital” is often described as the first novel to explore the inner workings of the European Union institutions, shedding light on its power struggles, bureaucracy, and lobbying groups. “The Capital” is a humorous and slightly absurd parody of the EU bubble in Brussels, with winks to Belgian artists such as Georges Simenon and René Magritte. Robert Menasse, a renowned Austrian novelist and essayist, received the German Book Prize (Deutscher Buchpreis) in 2017 for this novel. Menasse won many other literary prizes, including the Austrian State Prize for Literature (2012), the Heinrich Mann Prize (2013), and the European Book Prize (Prix du livre européen) (2015 and 2023).
Setting: Brussels (Belgium)
Original title: Die Hauptstadt
Year of publication: 2017
Nr of pages: 432
