The Death of Virgil

The Wednesday Book Group is now in our winter mode and reading something different from anything we’ve read in a long time: The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch, first published in 1945. It’s a novel about the last days of Virgil, poet of the Aeneid, but very much reflects the events in Broch’s era (rise of Hitler). Broch was a Viennese Jew who was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1938, but released through the efforts of, among others, James Joyce. We spent most of our two hours yesterday reading aloud passages from the first 40 pages. The writing is lyrical, at times extremely dense, and always profound. It certainly fits our definition of how we choose a book: one that you wouldn’t read on your own.