How do you ‘work through the past’ (p. 248) in order to make sense of the present? Milija Gluhovic's monograph offers rich ways of thinking through this question, as it studies the complex workings of individual and collective memories in post-Second World War Europe. Drawing on a wide range of literature from memory and trauma studies, history, politics and European studies, as well as works by European writers and makers (Müller, Kantor, Andrzej Wajda, Artur Zmijewski, Harold Pinter), this is an exemplary, interdisciplinary study, which makes a welcome contribution to the discipline, particularly in the areas of affect, politics and performance, by exploring theatre in a geographical area that has not been sufficiently studied: ‘new’ Europe.

Performing European Memories provides the reader with a detailed, nuanced analysis of European histories of war, violence and exclusion in the Continent (Holocaust, Stalinist Gulags and their impact on Eastern and Central Europe) and in the former colonies (Haitian revolution). By examining the ways in which theatre has contested such events and their aftermaths, Gluhovic challenges Eurocentric narratives founded on imperialist legacies and the dominance of a unified collective memory to frame the European project; instead, he emphasizes the complex geopolitics that define notions of centre and periphery, East and West, Europe and its Others, and subsequently determine what and where can be officially remembered – or not. Gluhovic argues for a conceptualization of Europe – both old and ‘new’ Europe – through diverse and often conflicting geographies of memory and multiple cultures of remembrance; in such a context, performance emerges as a space of cultural work and responsibility, a locus for collective witnessing, remembering and mourning, which are all necessary steps for justice and reconciliation to be achieved.

The book is ambitious in its scope; occasionally, the reader may feel that if the author had selected fewer examples and engaged more closely with stage performance, then he could have reached more tangible conclusions about these works and their resonance. But, whilst charting conflicting trajectories of loss, mourning and remembrance, Gluhovic puts forward two significant readings of the present through the past: first, in his chapter on revolution and Müller's The Task as a negotiation of Europe's colonial past (and its persistence in neo-colonial attitudes) he identifies an engagement with ‘the predicament of the European left’ (p. 100). Second, through his analysis of post-memory in Pinter's Ashes to Ashes and Zmijewski's 80064, he offers provocative and illuminating views on the limits of empathy and ‘adoptive witnessing’ (p. 216), as well as the ethical implications of testimony through art, especially in a context of re-enactment of trauma.

This rigorous method of historicizing the present is the main contribution of Gluhovic's work. The book's concluding chapter on theatre and performative acts in contemporary Sarajevo distils a poignant argument for cohabitation and ‘cultural convalescence’ with urgent political resonances not only in places like Bosnia but across multicultural Europe today. At a time when Europe is facing multilayered ‘crises’, Performing European Memories proposes an important argument about how performance may engage with history, intervene in the present and, hopefully, contribute to healing in the future.