Europe is an appealingly nebulous concept for writers, a place that is fabulously varied, steeped in history, and yet as much myth as a geographical reality. What constitutes the continent, after all, which countries are included, and where are its borders?
There isn’t really a definitive line in the east – somewhere in Russia, we might shrug, the Bosphorus that divides Istanbul? But whatever Europe is, it’s a location that millions dream of reaching. Some of these people turn up in Ben Judah’s This Is Europe, a powerful piece of reportage that develops many of the themes and techniques that he displayed in his groundbreaking earlier work, This Is London.
