A slim, formally strange novella set in Rome in 1943, following a young German woman as she walks through the city to attend a Bach concert while pregnant, alone, and slowly encircled by the realities of war.

The whole book unfolds as a single sentence — not as gimmick, but as thought moving, correcting itself, avoiding itself, trying to stay innocent while history breathes down its neck like a bad landlord. Delius writes the ordinary mind under fascism with unnerving restraint. This is not a grand war novel full of declarations and rubble; it is quieter and sharper than that. It traces how ideology lives inside small habits, manners, faith, politeness, denial, private hope, and the desperate wish to remain good while being structurally implicated in catastrophe. 

For readers of WG Sebald, Jenny Erpenbeck, Christa Wolf, Natalia Ginzburg, or anyone interested in memory, wartime interiority, and the terrifying politics of “just getting on with things.”

Peirene Press paperback, first published in English in 2010; this copy is a later Peirene reprint. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Very good condition, with light shelf wear only.