When the UK voted to leave the EU, Linnie Rawlinson packed a suitcase, an "I Heart EU" banner and a burgundy passport she wouldn't have for much longer and set off to visit all 28 countries of the European Union before Britain's departure deadline.
What follows is a journey that's part travel diary, part reckoning with a continent in flux. Rawlinson is menaced by Putin's armed motorcade in Vienna, swarmed by flying ants on a bullet-scarred Romanian train, unsettled by the lingering scars of war in Croatia and Serbia, and gets trapped in a train compartment with a stranger who may or may not be carrying a zombie knife.
Along the way, she drinks port in Porto, swims with turtles in Cyprus, gets patronised in France and interrogated about her heritage in Croatia - while quietly building a portrait of a Europe far messier, funnier and more human than the referendum debate ever allowed.
Blending the geopolitical eye of Tim Marshall's Prisoners of Geography, the historical curiosity of Simon Winder's Germania and the warmth and wit of Dolly Alderton, With or Without EU is a love letter to a continent, written during its most painful break-up.
