Patrik Ourednik’s Europeana

Alan Rossi

Natura Morta, January 23, 2010

Patrik Ourednik’s Europeana: a compressed history of the twentieth century. with prose slung with heavy death tolls and absurd communities and nations of people, it’s hard not to be amused by people, to see the absurdities Ourednik wants us to see. Oh, the prose: Ourednik sings to the reader this baffling history painted in enormous strokes. there are no characters, no plot, save for the paradigm shifts in human thinking – and those shifts, well, i’ll keep reading all day to get the quick on human thinking. and myself, i kept thinking, He must have done a ton of research for this thin book. the book cycles, repeats, almost restarts, and yet takes you just about as everywhere as you want to be.