From award-winning historian Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe''s Twentieth Century retells the story of a century of division, charting the struggles of rival ideologies to create a new world order for mankind.

The end of the First World War saw old empires swept away and the opportunity to build a better society from the ruins. Yet the result was division and bloodshed on an unprecedented scale, as liberal democracy, communism and fascism struggled against one another for mastery of the world.

Dark Continent radically overturns the myth of Europe as a safe haven of democracy to redefine our view of the twentieth century.

''Original, thought-provoking, iconoclastic'' Frank McLynn, Irish Times

''Fascinating and forceful'' Martin Gilbert, Literary Review

''Mazower leaves us, in this wonderful book, with an account of our century that anyone who takes an interest in Europe''s present and future will enlarge their mind by reading'' John Keegan, Daily Telegraph

''There are few who can walk with A.J.P. Taylor. One is Mark Mazower ... a tour de force'' Alex Danchev, TLS

''Combines narrative verve with wise and humane analysis. For anyone who wants to know how Europe came to be the way it is in the years since 1900, this is the work to provide the answers'' David Cannadine, Observer Books of the Year

Mark Mazower is the author of Inside Hitler''s Greece, The Balkans, which won the Wolfson Prize for History, Salonika: City of Ghosts, which won both the Runciman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize and Hitler''s Empire.