A magnificent year in a city steeped in tradition: as a scholarship holder at the Villa Massimo, Feridun Zaimoglu sets out to explore Rome and get to know the Romans. Surprising encounters and brilliant commentaries are the result. * It is a great honour but also an enormous burden to spend a year, living and working, as a German-speaking author in Rome, especially if you are obviously a German of Turkish descent. Feridun Zaimoglu is not put off. He throws himself into local life, learns enough Italian to get by, avoids tourist spots and spends time wandering around flea markets with fellow foreigners. Sergei, the mysterious Ukrainian, becomes his intrepid companion, the eternal city becomes his new home. St. Peter’s Square is briefly a favourite haunt while Pope John Paul II’s illness and death and the election of Benedict XVI keep the city in suspense. He also becomes a fan of the Campo dei Fiori because there is so much to look at on around the square. All this results in ethnographical studies, literary fantasies and occasional personal contacts. With a keenly observant eye, great linguistic sensitivity and an infallible feel for the unexpected, he shows us his Rome, although always leaves us wondering: did this really happen?
