Introducing the book

and Alan Johns

“Oh Europa!” is about relationships between:-

  • Anna and Grandad
  • One man and his idea
  • Four friends in a pub
  • Historians and history
  • Britain and Europe

But to begin at the beginning…

WHAT’S THE BOOK ABOUT?

“Oh Europa!” is the story of two travellers in modern Europe. It is also a voyage of discovery with lively, red-haired, Anna and her Grandfather competing to make sense of the pieces of the jigsaw in that big picture. As the old Century slips away and the 21st arrives, they cross the English Channel with teen-age Anna asking about the spirit of the age and old Europe’s origins. – Is modern Europe going to heaven or hell? Then she finds out about the amazing man whose idea inspired the European Union. (Grandad says both Europe and the European Union are tricky – and they are very different). Anna and Grandad have fun visiting Bruges, Paris and end up in Lewes which is a very historic, old town in southern England. There Grandad George catches up with his friends in a pub arguing about history. So that’s the synopsis.

Alan Johns writes about how the book began… 

“After moving from Britain to Germany in the late 1990s, I became increasingly puzzled about modern Europe’s future. Were we all going ‘direct to heaven’ with the European Union crowd,  or ‘direct the other way’ with the Eurosceptics? So I got some information from the Brussels HQ;  the booklets were as dry as dust, full of jargon and an alphabet soup of organisations. – It was not surprising that the man-in-the-street was turned off big time by Eurospeak! So one Spring day I sat under a German tree, drank Maiboc (which is a wonderfully, strong, young local beer) and started writing about the Europe I saw…

“Oh europa!” is written in an exciting, new cross-over style… 

The book’s genre is creative non-fiction, an easy-reading style, which is now taught in many Eng. Lit. university departments & is fast becoming publishing hot news! Lee Gutkind’s American website puts it this way… “In some ways, creative nonfiction is like jazz—it’s a rich mix of flavors, ideas, and techniques, some of which are newly invented and others as old as writing itself. Creative nonfiction can be an essay, a journal article, a research paper, a memoir, or a poem; it can be personal or not, or it can be all of these. The words ‘creative’ and ‘nonfiction’ describe the form. The word ‘creative’ refers to the use of literary craft, the techniques fiction writers, playwrights, and poets employ to present nonfiction—factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid, dramatic manner. The goal is to make nonfiction stories read like fiction so that your readers are as enthralled by fact as they are by fantasy.”

 “Oh Europa!” is an ebook for intelligent students aged 18 to 80 who are curious about modern Europe. It is being published by instalments. And it is written in everyday language spoken by ordinary peeps! … Why not try it?

For a limited period you can get the first 4 chapters as a FREE OFFER in device friendly PDF format  click here

Alternatively for only £1.99 you can buy the first 4 chapters of Volume 1 in Amazon’s Kindle format which will work on any device with the Kindle App click here 

“Unless there is a nasty, continental, post-Referendum plot to drag the British Isles into mid-Atlantic and pull the plug out, we will remain neighbours! So Remain or Leave, we all need to find a way to live together harmoniously.”  

Alan Johns,  23 June 2016.