Simon Strauss

A young man comes to the eternal city to shake off the present. In Rome he remembers. In Rome he falls in love. In Rome he mourns. He meets extraordinary people and finds his task: to perceive everything, leaving nothing out. The murder of Caesar is as much alive to him as the struggle of the sunglasses sellers on the Corso.

Ancient and modern ideals, bright palaces, exuberant parties and passing art. Locals, migrants, believers, tourists, beggars. In between, rubbish, lots of rubbish. And again and again the stabbing in the chest, which the doctors don’t want to take seriously. Roman Days leads to the many beginnings and ends of our world and asks, in “unagitated transparency” (DLF), what we will make of it tomorrow.

Simon Strauß, born in 1988, studied, among other things, ancient history and is co-founder of the group “Working on Europe”. In 2017 he received his doctorate on concepts of Roman society; he is editor of the FAZ feuilleton. His debut Seven Nights received great attention.