Where Is the EU in Literary Fiction?

14 Sep 2025

I am both a politics junkie and a policy wonk. So much so that this even shapes my taste in novels, series, and movies. Especially novels.

I have read numerous books in which government, bureaucratic institutions, or the public service of the United States play an essential role in the storyline; not even counting thrillers and crime fiction. The same goes for the UK, where some of John le Carré’s novels deserve special mention for their sharp insight into the workings of the bureaucratic machinery.

But what about the European Union?

I can’t recall having read many novels about the EU, apart from some cross-border police cooperation in Arne Dahl’s excellent thrillers, and the superbly ironic The Capital by Robert Menasse. That novel follows a group of Eurocrats, lobbyists, and politicians as they attempt to organize a grand anniversary celebration of the EU while getting caught up in petty rivalries, bureaucratic absurdities, political scandals, a pig, and an unexpected murder investigation.

Am I overlooking novels that use the Berlaymont as a setting instead of the White House?

ChatGPT to the rescue:

With a simple prompt about bestselling books in this genre, ChatGPT produces a substantial list of novels related to the U.S. The same goes for the UK (though, oddly, ChatGPT didn’t include John le Carré in its results).

Not surprisingly, there’s very little from my own country, the Netherlands. So little, in fact, that ChatGPT listed Het Bureau by Voskuil. That is a brilliant 5,500-page novel about the very boring and mundane life of a researcher at a governmental institute. Worth reading, but not what I was asking for. Still, the Netherlands is a small country with a small language, which might explain the scarcity.

The EU, however, is neither small nor limited by language. Or too fragmented by languages?

At first glance, the list ChatGPT returned didn’t seem too meagre. But apart from Menasse’s The Capital, the only major literary novel to make the EU bureaucracy itself the central stage, most of the other works are thrillers or satires by journalists or former EU insiders, with very little mainstream visibility. They shouldn’t really have been returned by ChatGPT as “bestselling” novels:

• The Bruxellisation of Eddy — Michael Cule (unpublished play script, c. 1980s)
• Le Bureau des Secrets — Philippe Le Guillou (1997)
• Euro Babylon — David Charter (1999)
• Q & A: A Brussels Thriller — Michael Wills (2000)
• The Commissioner — Stanley Johnson (2001)
• Mission Europe — Brian Harris (2004)
• The Brussels Sojourn — William L. Adams (2005)
• The Candidate — Daniel Pembrey (2013)
• The Capital — Robert Menasse (2017)
• Mission Paris / Mission Brussels — Alex Lukeman (2018–2019)

From this, I draw three conclusions:

1. ChatGPT is too eager to return results, so when it runs out of correct answers, it starts hallucinating.
2. There really is very little in terms of EU-themed novels, so my initial impression seems correct.
3. Given conclusion 1, I am not sure I can trust conclusion 2 but that does not change my impression.

Why is this? No, I will not ask ChatGPT.

(I will update this post if readers suggest novels that fit my query.)

#randomramblings