Magnificent. Beautifully written, immaculately researched and thoroughly absorbing from start to finish. A tour de force that explains how Europe's cultural life transformed during the course of the 19th century - and so much more. -- Peter Frankopan
Magnificent and utterly gripping: European identity, culture and commerce through the lives of three remarkable individuals, the book for our times. -- Philippe Sands
It plunged me into another world. I learned so much and was carried away by the intelligence and fluidity of the style - a combination which is unbeatable. -- Antonia Fraser
[There are] a multitude of fascinating pieces of information to be gleaned from Orlando Figes's magisterial and wide-ranging book The Europeans ... Relevant, trenchant and searching. -- William Boyd * The Guardian *
Meticulously detailed, exhaustively researched and written with Figes's characteristic verve, The Europeans is a sweeping tour de force and a monumental work of historical synthesis. -- Julian Coman * The Observer *
Figes in his maturity is a fine, subtle writer with a nice eye for detail and clever with structure. I finished the book entertained, informed and armed with the kinds of insights and questions that will keep me happily going for the rest of the year. -- David Aaronovitch * The Times *
Remarkable ... Orlando Figes is a fine historian who combines scholarly detail with readability. His wide-ranging book touches on a multitude of subjects. But at its heart is a love triangle - the very human story of three remarkable individuals whose lives he has resurrected with great sympathy and insight. -- Nick Rennison * Daily Mail *
Timely, brilliant and hugely enjoyable ... A magnificently humane book, written with supple grace but firmly underpinned by meticulous scholarship. -- Rupert Christiansen * Sunday Telegraph *
Extraordinary ... It is a world of cultural sophistication and emotional complexity played out against a backdrop of breath-taking economic and technological progress. -- Lesley Chamberlain * Financial Times *
Orlando Figes's majestic, passionately engaged The Europeans could hardly be more timely. Huge in scope yet packed with detail, it's a riveting account of the emergence of 19th-century pan-European culture ... Most thought-provoking is how alive this history still feels today. -- Steph Power * BBC Music Magazine *
I loved the book. I read it in every spare moment, fascinated and sometimes surprised. All of the principal characters are inspiring, but The Europeans also shows the struggles and backbiting and mistakes which can also lie behind a repertoire we tend to take for granted. I have been speaking about the book to everyone I know: it is clearly not just a book for musicians but for the widest audience interested in literature, music and art. -- Barbara Hannigan
The Europeans is a massively impressive work, as enjoyable as it is knowledgeable, full of insights into the mechanisms of history and in the people who make it. It is a book about the making of Europe, and this description, wonderful as it is, has now, in these days, sadly, also almost a utopian quality to it. Orlando Figes is an outstanding historian and writer, he brings distant history so close that you could feel its heartbeat. He did it with the Russian Revolution in A People's Tragedy, and he does it again in The Europeans. -- Karl Ove Knausgaard
An extraordinary, capacious and accomplished biography ... Deeply researched and engaging, it is filled with revelations, and takes us fascinatingly into European culture in the 19th century. -- Suzannah Lipscomb * BBC History Magazine *
Figes's knowledge is breath-taking in its range and precision ... A conclusion to draw from The Europeans is that tribalism is stronger than art ... This a melancholy reflection, but it accentuates, rather than reduces, the value of Figes's tumultuously informative and educative work. -- John Carey * Sunday Times *
Written beautifully, with striking wit, joie de vivre and learning worn lightly... this superb, flamboyant and masterful tour d'horizon is fun, anecdotal and fascinating, colourful and playful. -- Praise for NATASHA'S DANCE * Financial Times *
Magnificent -- Praise for NATASHA'S DANCE * Guardian *
