Europa

A finalist for the Booker Prize, this ferociously comic tale of love gone sour is the finest novel to date from the author of the national bestsellers, "An Italian Education" and "Italian Neighbors".

The voice of Europa is that of Jerry Marlow: a divorced, middle-aged British expatriate who teaches classics at an Italian university and who is recovering (poorly) from a recently ended affair with a French colleague (known in the novel as "her"). The novel begins with Marlow sitting on a bus, disgruntled, depressed, at a crossroads of his life. He is traveling from Milan to Luxembourg with other foreign professors to lodge a protest with the European parliament about new laws threatening their teaching status in Italy. After all, are there still "foreigners" in Europe? Doesn't the European Union mean national differences no longer pertain? Also on the bus are nubile young Italian students -- thrilled to be invited along with their professors -- and, sitting in the third row, "her". Marlow's running commentary merges fantasies and memories to create a savagely funny portrait of a man patching together the pieces of his life, in a Europe attempting to create political unity out of cultural difference. Europa is Parks's finest novel to date.