Epic Continent: Adventures in the Great Stories of Europe

This is a basic text element.

Nicholas Jubber has travelled in the Middle East, Central Asia, North and East Africa and across Europe. Along the way, he has worked as a teacher, carpet-washer and even had a stint as a tannery assistant. He has written three previous books, The Timbuktu School for Nomads, The Prester Quest (winner of the Dolman Travel Book Award) and Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard (shortlisted for the Dolman Award). He has written for numerous publications, including the Guardian, Observer, Globe and Mail, Irish Times and BBC History.

Award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber journeys across Europe exploring Europes epic poems, from the Odyssey to Beowulf, the Song of Roland to the Nibelungenlied, and their impact on European identity in these turbulent times. Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2020 A thought-provoking treatise interwoven with blistered-feet-on-the-ground accounts of spots both pretty and gritty National Geographic Compelling, thought-provoking, and courageous, this epic-poetic journey peels back layers of collective emotional and imaginative inheritance. Jubber gets under the skin of our complicated continent and his timing is dead right Kapka Kassabova A genuine epic Wanderlust The prose is colourful and vigorous...Jubbers journeying has indeed been epic, in scale and ambition. In this thoughtful travelogue he has woven together colourful ancient and modern threads into a European tapestry that combines the sombre and the sparkling Spectator Epic Continent sets out on a physical and mythological journey to uncover what it means to be European Geographical These are the stories that made Europe.Reaching back into the ancient and medieval eras in which these defining works were produced, and investigating their continuing influence today, Epic Continent explores how matters of honour, fundamentalism, fate, nationhood, sex, class and politics have preoccupied the people of Europe across the millennia. In these tales soaked in blood and fire, Nicholas Jubber discovers how the world of gods and emperors, dragons and water maidens, knights and princesses made our own: their deep impact on European identity, and their resonance in our turbulent times. Journeying from Turkey to Iceland, award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber takes us on a fascinating adventure through our continents most enduring epic poems to learn how they were shaped by their times, and how they have since shaped us.

This is a basic text element.