Italian author Simone Sarasso has written Colosseum, an exciting novel about Roman gladiators in the first century.
Why the hell write a book about gladiators now, in the twenty-first century? That’s what I call a question.
’Cause I’m Italian, folks. And ever since I started writing novels ten years ago, I wrote about the contradictions that have torn my country apart, from the age of Domitian ’till the present day.
Power and loss of power. Privileges that come from gold. Innocence and slavery.
From the dawn of the empire, Rome was the center of the world, a symbol of magnificence and corruption, morality and paradox.
Just like it is today.
The only difference between the past and the present day is the game that powerful people use to entertain the masses to keep ’em quiet while they play another game.
The big one.
Nowadays, social networks, TV, and celebrity scandals keep the audience busy enough not to watch what’s going on in the control center.
Two thousand years ago, another formula did the same job: panem et circenses.
Bread and games: two men in the arena, struggling for their own lives.
Hundreds of people watching, shouting, forgetting everything but their thirst for blood.
With their mouths full of free bread, a lovely present from you know who.
If death turns into a sport, if your national pastime is slaughter and not baseball, if you are hungry enough . . . why should you worry about anything else? Why should you worry, dude?
The desire to answer this question was why, in the early twenty-first century, I decided to write about ancient gladiators. Reading Colosseum, the story of two slaves turned into gods of the arena, you’ll discover that the answer is not as simple as you thought, people . . .
I hope, from the bottom of my heart, you enjoy every single page.
-- Simone Sarasso