Sister Europe by Nell Zink review – all the ideas Trump deems most dangerous

This comedy of manners set among Berlin’s cultural elite is a prescient interrogation of language, identity and powerOn 7 March 2025 the New York Times published a list of words that the Trump administration was systematically culling from government documents and educational materials. This list, which includes the words “gender ideology”, “affirming care”, “confirmation bias”, “ethnicity”, “identity”, “immigrants”, “racism”, “prostitute”, “political”, “intersectional” and “privilege”, reads like a bingo card for Nell Zink’s astonishingly prescient new novel, Sister Europe, in which a large cast of racially, economically and gender-diverse characters convene over the course of a single evening to attend a literary awards ceremony in Berlin.On its surface, Sister Europe is a comedy of manners set among Berlin’s exclusive and elusive cultural elite. The prose is searingly quick, revelatory and funny: Zink’s dialogue reads like our best plays. Entertaining banter could be this book’s largest trophy, were it not for the contents of the banter, which are so ambitious and ethically interested that they make it clear that Zink is one of our most important contemporary writers.On reading [Masud’s] books, Demian discovered to his consternation a grating and persistent anti-Black racism. Was it excusable? He excused it, on the grounds that it would be hard for an anti-Black racist to do much damage in Norway, where anti-Muslim racism was a deadly threat (admittedly much of it intersectional, directed against Somalis). Was it patronising to suspend his ethical standards because the man was a genius, or Eurocentric not to suspend them, and which was worse?He whispered hesitantly, speaking into the towel over her ear, “You want to change your life.”“That was stupid,” she replied. “Life should change me. I don’t want to be destructive of a living thing, flattening it with my identity.” She said the word slowly. As though identities were something ubiquitous, but distasteful, like dust mites, that might be dispensed with, given careful hygiene. Continue reading...

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