Death In Rome

"Death In Rome" is a book about a German composer, Sigfried, who is in Rome for the performance of his symphonic work conducted by his friend. He is not in a hurry to conjure new images of the dead-gods in one of his unfinished work nor does he have anywhere to go or any self-important person to meet. All he is doing is wandering around the piazzas and markets of Rome. He lives like every moment of his life is mutually exclusive to the one preceding it. He has no plans and he hates his memory. And through his memories, the writer nudges us, pushes us to look at the Horror of War, the Total War, waged by Nazis in their attempts to convert the Continent into a single Corporation under Fuhrer.

Writer creates a portrait of Sigfried's family by letting Sigfried to narrate his thoughts and then switches back to a more ambivalent narrative voice. In a way, the book works as a post-novel where everything exists in parallel from the prehistoric Deities that overlooked Rome from Olympus to Sigfried's angst-ridden trysts with abused-boys under the streets of Rome to his uncle, the renegade Nazi General who "served at the altar of Death and fed Death aplenty". Everything is in the past and Rome as it exists now is new, gleaming and forward-looking and wants to desperately cling on to the delusion of eternity. This is where Sigfried gets to have a dialogue with himself and Death (which stands for many things by the end of the book) makes a comeback.