Talking Europe hosts Austrian author Robert Menasse, the winner of the 2023 European Union book prize. The award was set up in 2007 to foster a European spirit and promote understanding of the EU from a cultural perspective. The prize has previously been bestowed on such towering figures as Jonathan Coe, Philippe Sands and Tony Judt. Menasse is the only writer to have won the award twice. We discuss his prize-winning novel “The Enlargement”, which takes places against the backdrop of the actual enlargement of the European Union. It forms the second novel in his trilogy, after “The Capital” in 2019.