Katharina Raabe/Monika Sznajderman Last & Lost: Ein Atlas des verschwindenden Europas (Last & Lost: an Atlas of a Disappearing Europe) 2006, 338 pp. ISBN: 3-518-41772-X Every so often you stumble across a book – on your own or perhaps it’s recommended by a friend – that stops you short and makes you want to linger. Last and Lost is one of these rare treasures, an anthology of writings on forgotten or fast disappearing places, from Dunwich on the coast of Suffolk to Benidorm in Spain, from the Romanian Danube to Kaliningrad in Russia, from Lisbon to the northern climes of Norway and from Ireland to Istanbul, in a work of exquisite charm further enhanced by striking photographs. Obviously a labour of love, it provides a wealth of fascinating and subjective information, a swansong and a salute on the theme of beauty vanishing. The editors, Katharina Raabe in Germany and Monika Sznajderman in Poland, invited authors from fifteen countries to write about places in Europe that mean something special to them, places that inspire them and places that may not exist much longer in the form in which they still remain – neíghbourhoods with the cracks showing, crumbling stretches of coast, deserted villages, all with a particular atmosphere and a certain fragile magic. There is so much of interest here to attract readers of many sorts, and to recall, in untheatrical persuasiveness, what must be recorded before it disappears.