MixedLos Angeles Review of BooksAs Europe remembers that history isn’t over, perhaps now is the time for a more careful discussion of what a post-national Europe could be. If that imaginative project is political, then The Capital is best read as a political novel, one that aims to imagine an EU that would allow Europe finally to supersede its terrifically violent history. But the novel also seems dubious of its own hopes. With its curiously shapeless plot and violent resolution, The Capital doubts that its ideals will ever be achieved ... This ultimately poignant view of the European condition and its deep sensitivity to its characters’ inner lives ultimately makes The Capital seem like something other than a satire ... The humor and pathos of the novel draw from this tension between enlightened visions of European citizenship and the ugly stupidity of the backroom dealing that actually shapes EC policy and the EU’s reality ... Against its pessimism, the novel offers a weird bit of hope ... This feeling that Menasse misses the real character of the nationalism he disdains—a nationalism that emerged under globalization rather than in the shadow of the Franco-Prussian War—is ultimately the most significant problem with a novel that attempts to assess the European condition ... What seems particularly naïve about Menasse’s political vision, however, is not that he wants to eliminate the nation-state, but the way he wants to transform democratic participation and bureaucratic power.