Death in Rome

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. And amid haunting flashbacks and against the shadows of Rome with its imperial echoes, the darkness is alive.

Brace yourself: the novel takes place over a two-day period, mostly at night, and it's certain that the present will be governed by the past, if you let it. 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.”