Grand Hotel Europa

Grand Hotel Europa is the international bestseller by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, a moving and addictive masterpiece exploring European identity, nostalgia, and the end of an era.

"A masterpiece: grandiose style, brilliant and rich. It will defy the ages" - Trouw (The Netherlands)

"The love of my life lives in my past. That is, despite the alliteration, a terrible sentence to write. I do not want to come to the conclusion that, as it is the case for the hotel where I am staying and the continent after which it is named, the best time is behind me and that I have little more to expect from the future than to live on my past."

A writer takes residence in the illustrious but decaying Grand Hotel Europa to reflect on where things went wrong with Clio, with whom he fell in love in Genoa before moving to Venice. He reconstructs a compelling story of love in times of mass tourism, recounting their trips to Malta, Palmaria, Portovenere, and the Cinque Terre, and their thrilling search for the last painting of Caravaggio.

Meanwhile, he becomes fascinated by the mysteries of Grand Hotel Europa and gets increasingly involved with the memorable characters who inhabit it, who seem to come from a more elegant time. All the while, globalisation appears to grasp hold even of this place frozen in time.

Grand Hotel Europa is Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s masterly novel on the old continent, where so much history resides that there is no place left for a future, and where the most realistic future perspectives are offered by exploiting the past in the form of tourism.