Roman Elegy

Writer Clara Burger arrives in Rome in 2009 to clear the flat of her school friend Ines, who has died prematurely from cancer. Sorting through Ines' belongings, Clara finds a manuscript containing an autobiographical account of strange experiences that Ines had while working as a chambermaid in Rome in the summer of 1978. Wrapped up with her diaries, Clara also discovers the life story of Ines' former employer, the hotelier Emma Manente. An ethnic German from Italy's troubled South Tyrol region like Clara and Ines, Emma first came to Rome in the late 1930s and became an eyewitness to the turbulent events of the subsequent decades: Benito Mussolini's fascist regime, the Nazi occupation, and the uneasy post-war democracy threatened by corruption and extremism.

A sweeping tale of remembrance and reconciliation, of lives unfulfilled and loves unrequited, Roman Elegy tells the personal stories of these three resilient women and how they came to terms with the times in which they lived. The narratives are woven together with a fascinating historical perspective on the Eternal City in all its contrasting squalor and beauty, compassion and savagery.

Sabine Gruber was born in 1963 in Merano, Italy, and has published widely, with a particular focus on the work of the South Tyrolean author Anita Pichler. She was awarded the 2008 Linz Book Prize for her previous novel Overnight, which was also longlisted for the German Book Prize.