Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2020

These are the stories that made Europe.

Journeying from Turkey to Iceland, award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber takes us on a fascinating adventure through our continent's most enduring epic poems to learn how they were shaped by their times, and how they have since shaped us.

The great European epics were all inspired by moments of seismic change: The Odyssey tells of the aftermath of the Trojan War, the primal conflict from which much of European civilisation was spawned. The Song of the Nibelungen tracks the collapse of a Germanic kingdom on the edge of the Roman Empire. Both the French Song of Roland and the Serbian Kosovo Cycle emerged from devastating conflicts between Christian and Muslim powers. Beowulf, the only surviving Old English epic, and the great Icelandic Saga of Burnt Njal, respond to times of great religious struggle - the shift from paganism to Christianity. These stories have stirred passions ever since they were composed, motivating armies and revolutionaries, and they continue to do so today.

Reaching back into the ancient and medieval eras in which these defining works were produced, and investigating their continuing influence today, Epic Continent explores how matters of honour, fundamentalism, fate, nationhood, sex, class and politics have preoccupied the people of Europe across the millennia. In these tales soaked in blood and fire, Nicholas Jubber discovers how the world of gods and emperors, dragons and water-maidens, knights and princesses made our own: their deep impact on European identity, and their resonance in our turbulent times.

A boatload of men rushing away from a war-zone, seeking sanctuary in the islands of the Mediterranean...

A squabble amongst the French political elite, over the best way to 'deal with Islam'...

A broken alliance in Northern Europe, grievances festering, leading to wholesale destruction...

Are these stories ripped from the front pages of our newspapers - or the plots of epic sagas written hundreds of years ago?

In A Continent of Epics, award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber journeys across Europe, exploring the epic poems and how they have a startling resonance in contemporary times.

Reaching back to the era remembered as 'the Age of Migration', Jubber explores how attitudes to population movement, borders, kin relations, sex, class and political structures are dramatised in the ancient and medieval epics. From Homer's Odyssey, through the devastating conflict of the French Song of Roland and the German Nibelungenlied, to the great Viking sagas such as Beowulf and the Icelandic Njal's Saga, these are timeless tales about human nature; but also windows into other societies, with different emphases on matters of honour, kinship, fundamentalism and fate.

Both a thrilling look at the stories sung by medieval bards and minstrels and a journey across a continent struggling with its identity, A Continent of Epics examines how the great heroes dealt with their manifold challenges and explores how their influence has resonated down the ages to impact on what it means to be 'European' today.