Trans-Europe Express

Over the past twenty years European cities have become the envy of the world- a Kraftwerk Utopia of historic centres, supermodernist concert halls, imaginative public spaces and futuristic egalitarian housing estates which, interconnected by high-speed trains traversing open borders, have a combination of order and pleasure which is exceptionally unusual elsewhere.

In Trans-Europe Express, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the European city across the entire continent, to see what exactly makes it so different to the Anglo-Saxon norm - the unplanned, car-centred, developer-oriented spaces common to the US, Ireland, UK and Australia. Attempting to define the European city, Hatherley finds a continent divided both within the EU and outside it.

“The latest heir to Ruskin. - Boyd Tonkin - Independent”

I loved it, and I'll go back to it again and again -- Philip Pullman Can one talk yet of vintage Hatherley? Yes, one can. Here are all the properties that have made him one of the most distinctive writers in England - not just 'architectural writers', but writers full stop: acuity, contrariness, observational rigour, frankness and beautifully wrought prose. -- Jonathan Meades Hatherley is the most informed, opinionated and acerbic guide you could wish for. -- Hugh Pearman Sunday Times Praise for Landscapes of Communism: 'A revelatory voyage into fantastical domains...It is an epic work' -- Rowan Moore Observer The latest heir to Ruskin. -- Boyd Tonkin Independent The best book I've read on Europe, blending history, architecture and contemporary politics and written in Owen Hatherley's trademark mixture of scepticism, erudition and humanity. He is a writer of lasting merit who will be read fifty years from now. -- Anna Minton

Owen Hatherley is the author of the acclaimed Militant Modernism, a defence of the modernist movement, and A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. He writes regularly on the political aesthetics of architecture, urbanism and popular culture for a variety of publications, including Building Design, Frieze, the Guardian and the New Statesman.

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