The Rome Plague Diaries: Lockdown Life in the Eternal City
MATTHEW KNEALE
(ATLANTIC books, 304 PP, £14.99)
Tablet bookshop price £13.49 • tel 020 7799 4064
Rome is a city burdened by centuries of murky human conflict. An estimated three million tourists descend each year on the Colosseum alone. Bogus guides dressed as Roman centurions regale the tourists with stories of gladiators and martyred Christians. In between shifts, these Felliniesque wide boys meet for coffee in the Colosseum Metro station bar, their plumed plastic helmets and breastplates resting on the counter. The Covid-19 pandemic has emptied the Colosseum of its centurion guides and left the Eternal City a tourist disaster zone generally. When will life go back to normal?
The novelist Matthew Kneale has lived in Rome for over 18 years and so knows the city intimately. In The Rome Plague Diaries, he chronicles the virus day by day as it swept through the Italian capital last spring. Well written and informative, the diary provides a good history along the way of Rome and its people, from Caesar to Pope Francis. It is what any lover of Rome needs close by: not a weighty historical tome, but a lively guide.