The
European Union very well may be the most interesting social experiment ever
attempted by mankind. Taking almost a
billion people with differing culture, language and belief, not to mention
centuries of unending feuds and wars, and unifying them under a single
government is an act unprecedented in world history. In many Europeans’ eyes, however, it’s just
that: an experiment, nothing certain about future coherence. A thought experiment which sees “Europe calving into icebergs”, Dave
Hutchinson’s 2014 novel Europe in Autumn
(2014) locates an atypical espionage thriller on the continent post-EU.
From
Scottish independence to Silesia’s secession from Poland, Europe in Autumn is set in a Europe recognizable culturally yet
fragmented politically. Rudi is an
Estonian chef working in Cracow, who finds himself faced with an interesting
and profitable proposition after his restaurant absorbs an evening’s destruction
from a group of drunk Hungarian mafia.
His Estonian passport giving him access to polities in Europe where
Poles are not allowed, he completes a simple mission into Germany and returns
safe and sound. That step his first into
the world of cross-border information trafficking, it isn’t long before the
information begins tracking him too, fully exposing just how intricate and
complex the relationship between government and the individual truly is across
the freshly shattered European continent.
