There are actors who start to sing but fail. There are models who try to act and … well… And there are MEPs who…
“Facts and fantasy about people, power struggles, love and hate behind the glass facades in Brussels and Strasbourg.”
If you think this could be the description of a daily soap in which MEPs are put together for one week alone in a parliamentary building full of cameras fighting for the vote of the audience is likely to be right, but isn’t. Actually, this is the cover text of a book that carries the green logo as well, a book that you can order –free of charge – at the Greens/EFA office in Brussels. A potential bestseller written by Per Gahrton, a swedish green MEP.
His protagonist, Vera, a swedish young and dynamic photo journalist with a special liking for Palestinian freedom fighters is delegated to Brussels. There she gets into troubles with some drug liberals that turn out to be Nazis. She follows their traces and researches about one murder, and a murder attempt and it gets quite dangerous. But she has some support, Yves, a leading person of the Green Group, French, former revolutionary and skyblue-eyed whom she falls incredibly in love with. Guess who this could be …? By chance, Yves is also after those Nazi-drug liberals and after playing undercover at one of their meetings he gets revealed and killed. Vera needs a break of three month to get over this, but then she pulls herself together, she has all the evidence against the murderers and she brings it to the press, is the new hero, gets the nobel price and everybody lives happily until the end…
No, it’s not that easy! Nobody believes her and after an Islamic attack there are not many people left to accuse. So all the trouble was in vain, Dan… er I mean Yves died in vain and in the end she goes on holiday with another guy.
A very nice book. It’s always interesting for you can all the time long guess who is who, which fictional person is who in the EP. And it’s also very informative. It contains a lot of information between the lines but also between the chapters, here Per Gahrton introduces parts of his EP diary. The reader gets informed about the voting procedures in the EP, the gossips of the EP and about the origin of his maternal grandmother.
And it’s also very green. We greens always say that everything depends on each other, everything is connected. Per Gahrton agrees. Especially the drug liberalists, the EU supporters and this Nazi-group and the tabacco mafia….
I’m not going to say more. According to the new fundraising plan we should behave nicely towards the MEPs. Especially we as board members. So I just say: Read it! This might be the first novel of the Green Group so it’s quite historical. If you prefer Dostoyevski or Joschka, take care of your blood pressure. But read it.
Per Gahrton: “Life and Death in the European Parliament” (2004, Books-on-Demand, Visby) can be ordered free of charge at the office of The Greens/ European Free Alliance in Brussels.