'The nationalisation of states is killing the European idea': EU book prize winner Menasse
Asked why he is drawn to the European Union as the subject matter for his books, Menasse says: "I am a novelist. What is a novel? What should a novel be able to tell? Contemporaneity. For us Europeans, the European Union is producing the basics and the context of all our lives; of our search for luck and wealth. It's European law which interferes in our lives, which defines our lives. So if I try to tell how we are living today, what our problems are, how we try to resolve them, and why we are not able to resolve them, that has all the time to do with the context of European law and the reality of the European Union."
