num_pages: 202
description: Wolfgang Koeppen's Death in Rome, in the words of translator Michael Hofmann, "is a comprehensive and brilliant provocation of an entire nation." First published in 1954 to great controversy, it is only now being recognized as a classic. A tragic portrait of Germany after World War II, Death in Rome completes the trilogy that earned Koeppen praise from Günter Grass in his lifetime as "the greatest living German writer." Mirroring the social and political upheaval following the fall of Nazism, Koeppen here offers 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. Koeppen re-creates the soul of a nation at a significant juncture of history in this devastating work of literary genius.
language: English
title: Death in Rome
titlecomplete: Death in Rome
characters: Dietrich Pfaffrath, Friedrich Pfaffrath, Laura Spencer, Adolf Judejahn, Kürenberg, Gottlieb Judejahn, Ilse Kürenberg, Eva Judejahn, Siegfried Pfaffrath
genres: Fiction, Italy, German Literature, Literature, Classics, Germany, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, World War II
ratings_count: 489
places: Rome
series: Trilogy of Failure
awards: awardedAt: 725875200000
name: Schlegel-Tieck Prize
category: Michael Hofmann
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company