Death In Rome

By (author) Koeppen Wolfgang; Translated by Hofmann, Michael; Introduction by Cohen, Joshua
Short description/annotation:
“In a brilliant translation of this great German novel, Michael Hofmann has illuminated a dark corner of recent European history. A forgotten masterpiece.” — Evening Standard
Description:
Death in Rome tells the story of four members of a German family—a former SS officer, a young man preparing for the priesthood, a composer and a government administrator—reunited by chance in the decaying beauty of postwar Rome. A chilling account of Nazis after the war, here the older generation is resentful but not repentant. From the old unreconstructed Nazi officer Judejahn (the name has a suggestion of “Jew hunter”) to the young and apparently gay priest, from the supposedly reformed Mayor to the acclaimed but haunted young composer Siegfried, no clear hope emerges. Amid haunting flashbacks and against the shadows of Rome with its imperial echoes, the darkness is alive. In Death in Rome, Koeppen amply demonstrates that evil doesn''t simply cease once it loses a war—it seeps out, hungry to exist in other forms. And as Siegfried confesses: “In my daydreams and nightmares I see the Browns and the nationalist idiocy on the march again.”
Biographical note:
Wolfgang Koeppen (1906-1996) was born in Greifswald and died in Munich. He worked as a junior chef, a dramaturge, and an editor. In 1951, 1953 and 1954 three novels were published to high acclaim for accurately capturing the atmosphere of the republic under Konrad Adenauer: Pigeons on the Grass, The Hothouse, and Death in Rome. The award-winning translator Michael Hofmann has also translated works by Jenny Erpenbeck, Gert Hofmann, Franz Kafka, Heinrich von Kleist, and Joseph Roth for New Directions. His translation of Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck was awarded the International Booker Prize in 2024. Joshua Cohen is the author of six novels, one collection of short fiction, and one collection of nonfiction. Called "a major American writer" by the New York Times, and "an extraordinary prose stylist, surely one of the most prodigious at work in American fiction today" by the New Yorker, Cohen was awarded the 2013 Matanel Prize, and in 2017 was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. The Netanyahus won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.