Long Reads

James Morris explores Anca Parvulescu’s and Manuela Boatcă’s book Creolizing the Modern: Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania across Empires (Cornell University Press, 2022), arguing that if to “creolize” is in part to complicate and challenge national mythologies, then it is important to confront nationalism’s racist language.

Hans Kundnani’s book Eurowhiteness (Hurst, 2023) elicited two critical reviews on the pages of the CEU Review of Books. Here Kundnani responds to Ferenc Laczó’s and Raluca Bejan’s Long Read pieces. 

Hans Kundnani’s book Eurowhiteness (Hurst, 2023) propositions that white ethnic nationalism is at the basis of European identity. In her Long Read, however, Raluca Bejan unwraps several issues that she argues make Kundnani’s argumentation flawed.

Gábor Egry reflects on the blurred boundaries between historical and subjective writing and on the historical in the autobiographical through Ignác Romsics’s “egohistory”, Hetven év – Egotörténelem 1951-2021 [Seventy years – Egohistory, 1951-2021, Vol. 1] (Helikon Kiadó, 2022).

Hans Kundnani’s book Eurowhiteness (Hurst, 2023) provides a strong critique of the European Union and what he claims is its rootedness in “imperial amnesia”. Ferenc Laczó in his Long Read, however, writes that Kundnani’s narrow perspective on western Europe leads to him overlooking the ongoing history of imperialism within the geography of Europe, namely Russian imperialism.

Réka Krizmanics reviews the volume Socialism Goes Global edited by James Mark and Paul Betts and discusses the long-term prospects of globalizing Eastern Europe as a subfield.

Jasmina Lukić remembers her friend, the writer Dubravka Ugrešić through her literary work and reminds us to “believe in the magic of literature”.