In his magnum opus about the Danube River, Claudio Magris tracked the entire course of the waterway from the Alps to the Black Sea. Filled with history, politics and geography, Danube is an epic 400-page love letter to Mitteleuropa, in which Haydn, Hölderlin and the Hapsburgs sit right alongside the most obscure nobodies, all of whom contributed to the grand aura of the river.