Counter-Revolution
Liberal Europe in Retreat
Jan Zielonka
Reviews and Awards
Winner of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) Best Book Prize
"Jan Zielonka has provided us with an engaging and stimulating diagnosis of the pathologies of the European crisis of liberalism." - Ben Wellings, Australian Book Review
"Zielonka seeks not so much to defend the status quo based on the particular form of liberalism that has prevailed throughout the West in the past forty years, as to ask what went wrong with the wider liberal project. His critique of the complacency of Western and especially European elites is particularly powerful." - Hans Kundnani, The Times Literary Supplement
"I read Zielonka's earnest analysis of todays Europe this past weekend and recommend you read it too; the book of some 150 pages might replace that slightly stale flavor that Ivan Krasnev's "After Europe" left me with: Yes, something might have gone wrong, but where exactly, and what now?" - Florian Eder, Politico
"This is a bracing, if perhaps unduly pessimistic, self-criticism from a writer who remains a liberal and wants to retrieve its values. Applied to east and central Europe it highlights the weaknesses of their societies confronted with huge economic and political change." - Irish Times
"Zielonka's analysis is a curious mix, a liberal critique of populism and a populist critique of liberalism." - UCL European Institute