This volume is an absurdist play in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for the arrival of someone named Godot. They claim he's an acquaintance but in fact hardly know him, admitting that they would not recognize him when they do see him. To occupy the time they eat, sleep, converse, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide -- anything "to hold the terrible silence at bay". Throughout...

Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where, historically, empires clashed and sieges from the east toppled kingdoms and enslaved peoples. Many view the region-comprising present-day Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, and Romania, among other countries--as united only by the shared experience of invasions launched by foreign powers, from the Huns of the fourth century, to the Swedes of the seventeenth, to...