Europa

Tim Parks’ comic novel explores what happens when obsessive love goes wrong, through an eloquent and embittered stream of consciousness.

"Sheer enjoyment... Doffing his hat to Joyce and Beckett, Parks really hits his stride."  -  Mail On Sunday

Jeremiah Marlowe, a professor in his mid-40s, is unrequitedly in love with the Frenchwoman for whom he left his wife and who then abandoned him. Devastated and on the verge of a breakdown, he accompanies a busload of students from Milan, where he teaches, to Strasbourg, on the slim chance that he may run into her. From the acclaimed author of Tongues of Flame, Europa is a darkly comic novel about obsessive love gone sour. Jealousy and revenge, passion and dread intertwine in one man's soul as he is stuck on a coach journey with the woman who broke his heart.

"The best thing about Europa is the voice Tim Parks conjures up: Marlow's wry, defeated reason keeps you turning the pages... A forlorn but seductive voice, reminding us that it is far easier to unite a sprawling continent than the few cubic metres that contain a human soul."  -  Sunday Times

Tim Parks is unique among Booker Prize authors in also being shortlisted for a major sports book prize (for A Season with Verona) and a health book prize (for Teach Us to Sit Still). He was Booker Prize longlisted for the second time with Judge Savage in 2003.