Severin – Bondy Egon (2020)

The prose Severin (1995) is among the most demanding of Bondy's prose texts due to its mosaic composition. The work is based on a hagiographical, Latin-written account by the monk Eugippus, Vita Sancti Severini, from the early sixth century. It is a biographical story set during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, taking place in the province of Noricum, i.e., present-day Austrian Danube. Into this more or less historically accurate depiction of the fifth-century situation, rich with numerous historically verifiable details, are incorporated both excerpts from the author's translation of the authentic text by Eugippus and fictional, or apocryphal, letters from St. Severin to his deceased life partner. One of the chapters also includes three narrative digressions, two of which introduce two other personalities from the fifth century: St. Sidonius Apollinaris from Auvergne and Bishop Hydatius from Spanish Galicia, while the third, framed by a seemingly mystical vision of St. Sidonius, brings us into the world of computer hackers at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This is the second book edition, resulting from a thorough textual revision and free from the extraordinarily large number of errors that marred the first edition from 1996.