'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."

And why was Menasse particularly interested in the Balkans, in this latest novel? "I was travelling in the Balkan states, North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro and so on, because I wanted to find the most interesting possible example out of all these countries which want to come into the European Union. And I suddenly realised: it's Albania. Albania is a very interesting country – completely different to the others and, at the same time, typical. They already implement European law and are not a member of the European Union. And members of the European Union like Poland are breaking European law. This contradiction was very interesting for me."

The author contends that the founding idea of the EU is being lost. "Europe does have a narrative. But the narrative has been forgotten," he asserts. "It's a fascinating narrative. The founding generation of the European project experienced in their life four nationalistic, brutal wars, because of aggressor nationalism. The idea was to take the different nations and combine them in a way so that none can do harm to another without damaging itself. The first