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'Many years ago there lived in Zuchnow, in Russia, a man named
Mendel Signer. He was pious, God-fearing and ordinary, an entirely
commonplace Jew...' So Roth begins his novel about the loss of
faith and the experience of suffering. His modern Job goes through
his trials in the ghettos of Tsarist Russia and on the unforgiving
streets of New York. Mendel Singer loses his family, falls terribly
ill and is badly abused. He needs a miracle...
In 1920, Joseph Roth, the most renowned German correspondent of his
age, arrived in Berlin, the capital of the Weimar Republic. He
produced a series of impressionistic and political writings that
influenced an entire generation of writers, including Thomas Mann
and the young Christopher Isherwood. Roth, like no other German
writer of his time, ventured beyond Berlin's official veneer to the
heart of the city, chronicling the lives of its forgotten
inhabitants - the Jewish immigrants, the criminals, the bathhouse
denizens, and the nameless dead who filled the morgues. Warning
early on of the threat posed by the Nazis, Roth evoked a landscape
of moral bankruptcy and debauched beauty, creating in the process
an unforgettable portrait of a city.
The Emperor's Tomb is a magically evocative, haunting elegy to the
vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to the passing
of time and the loss of youth and friends. Prophetic and regretful,
intuitive and exact, Roth's acclaimed novel is the tale of one
man's struggle to come to terms with the uncongenial society of
post-First World War Vienna and the first intimations of Nazi
barbarities.
'One of the greatest novels ever written' Philippe Sands Set
against the doomed splendour of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The
Radetzky March tells the story of the celebrated Trotta family,
tracing their rise and fall over three generations. Theirs is a
sweeping history of heroism and duty, desire and compromise,
tragedy and heartbreak, a story that lasts until the darkening eve
of World War One, when all is set to fall apart. Rich, epic and
profoundly moving, The Radetzky March is Joseph Roth's timeless
masterpiece.
Joseph Roth, the greatest European newspaper correspondent of his
age, left the splintering Weimar Republic for Paris in 1925 and, as
an Austrian Jew, was exiled there for the rest of his life.
Collected together here for the first time in English, these
exhilarating pieces evoke a world of suppleness, beauty and
promise. From the port town of Marseilles to the Riviera of Nice
and Monte Carlo, to the exotic hill country around Avignon, from
the socialist workers and cattlemen with whom Roth ate breakfast,
to prostitutes and Sunday bullfighters, The White Cities is not
only a swan song to a European order that could no longer hold but
also a beautifully crafted and revelatory work.
This novella, one of the most haunting things that Joseph Roth ever
composed, was published in 1939, the year the author died. Like
Andreas, the hero of the story, Roth drank himself to death in
Paris, but this is not an autobiographical confession. Rather, it
is a secular miracle-tale, in which the vagrant Andreas, after
living under bridges, has a surprising run of good luck that
changes his circumstances profoundly. The novella is
extraordinarily compressed, dry-eyed and witty, despite its
melancholic subject matter.
'A hugely significant and wonderfully haunting collection' William
Boyd In the 1920s and 1930s, Joseph Roth travelled extensively in
Europe, living in hotels and writing about the towns through which
he passed and the people he encountered. Collected in one volume,
his experiences in Italy, Germany, Russia, Albania and Ukraine form
a series of tender vignettes that capture life in the inter-war
years. Evocative, curious and sharply observed, these literary
postcards document a continent clinging to tradition while on the
brink of further upheaval.
The legendary Austro-Hungarian novelist and essayist, Joseph Roth,
was born in Ukraine in 1894 and died tragically in Paris in 1939.
These letters span the breadth of Roth's life, from the schoolboy
to the veteran of 44, marked by war, poverty, alcoholism, the loss
of his wife through madness, and two decades of prolific work. It
is a deeply moving portrait of the life of the writer as an
outsider, in exile from a world he no longer recognized as his own.
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The Spider's Web (Paperback)
Joseph Roth; Translated by John Hoare
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R302
R240
Discovery Miles 2 400
Save R62 (21%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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In The Spider's Web, his first novel, Roth paints a chillingly
realistic picture of the conspiracies of the radical right that
were to undermine the Weimar Republic and pave the way for Hitler
and National Socialism.
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The Radetzky March (Paperback)
Joseph Roth; Translated by Joachim Neugroschel
1
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R316
R259
Discovery Miles 2 590
Save R57 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 'Sublime ... it inspires a
kind of evangelical cult passion among its devotees' Simon Schama
'Roth is Austria's Chekhov' William Boyd Strauss's Radetzky March,
signature tune of one of Europe's most powerful regimes, presides
over Joseph Roth's account of three generations of the Trotta
family in the years preceding the Austro-Hungarian collapse in
1918. Grandfather, son and grandson are equally dependent on the
empire: the first for his enoblement; the second for the civil
virtues that make him a meticulous servant of an administration
whose failure he can neither comprehend nor survive; the third for
the family standards of conduct which he cannot attain but against
which he is too enfeebled to rebel.
'One of the greatest European novelists of the century' Sunday
Times Andreas is an alcoholic and a vagrant who lives under a
bridge. Downtrodden, submerged at the bottom of society, he lives a
fortuitous life - dictated by happenstance and the whims of others
- until a run of exceptionally good luck lifts him, briefly, onto a
different plane of existence. First published after Roth's death in
1939, The Legend of the Holy Drinker is haunting and melancholic,
yet filled with empathy. A secular miracle-tale, it is an
unforgettable testament to Roth's lucidity and compassion.
The Joseph Roth revival has finally gone mainstream with the
thunderous reception for "What I Saw," a book that has become a
classic with five hardcover printings. Glowingly reviewed, "What I
Saw" introduces a new generation to the genius of this tortured
author with its "nonstop brilliance, irresistible charm and
continuing relevance" (Jeffrey Eugenides, "New York Times Book
Review"). As if anticipating Christopher Isherwood, the book
re-creates the tragicomic world of 1920s Berlin as seen by its
greatest journalistic eyewitness. In 1920, Joseph Roth, the most
renowned German correspondent of his age, arrived in Berlin, the
capital of the Weimar Republic. He produced a series of
impressionistic and political essays that influenced an entire
generation of writers, including Thomas Mann and the young
Christopher Isherwood. Translated and collected here for the first
time, these pieces record the violent social and political
paroxysms that constantly threatened to undo the fragile democracy
that was the Weimar Republic. Roth, like no other German writer of
his time, ventured beyond Berlin's official veneer to the heart of
the city, chronicling the lives of its forgotten inhabitants: the
war cripples, the Jewish immigrants from the Pale, the criminals,
the bathhouse denizens, and the nameless dead who filled the
morgues. Warning early on of the dangers posed by the Nazis, Roth
evoked a landscape of moral bankruptcy and debauched beauty a
memorable portrait of a city and a time of commingled hope and
chaos. "What I Saw," like no other existing work, records the
violent social and political paroxysms that compromised and
ultimately destroyed the precarious democracy that was the Weimar
Republic."
Joseph Roth's sensibility-both clear-eyed and nostalgic, harshly
realistic and tenderly humane-produced some of the most distinctive
fiction of the twentieth century. This collection of his most
essential stories, in exquisite new translations by Ruth Martin,
showcases the astonishing range and power of his short stories and
novellas. In prose of aching beauty and precision, Roth shows us
isolated souls pursuing lost ideals and impossible desires. Forced
to remove a bust of the fallen Austrian emperor from his house, an
eccentric old count holds a funeral for it and intends to be buried
in the same plot himself; a humble coral merchant, dissatisfied
with his life and longing for the sea, chooses to adulterate his
wares with false coral, with catastrophic results; young Fini, just
entering the haze of early sexuality, falls into an unsatisfying
relationship with an older musician. With the greatest craft and
sensitivity, Roth unfolds the many fragilities of the human heart.
While visiting Vienna, the Shah of Persia falls for a beautiful
countess. The Austrian officials arrange for him to spend the night
with the "countess", but unbeknown to the Shah she is a prostitute
who merely resembles the countess. From this night follows a chain
of ruinous consequences.
A powerful collection written on the eve of the destruction of Europe by the Second World War, by the great Joseph Roth
In January 1933, on the very day Hitler seized power in Germany, Joseph Roth fled to Paris. There, in what he called the 'hour before the end of the world', he wrote a series of articles. The end he foresaw would soon come to pass in the full horror of Hitler's barbarism, the Second World War and most crucially for Roth, the final irreversible destruction of a pan-European consciousness.
Incisive and ironic, the writing evokes Roth's bitterness, frustration and morbid despair at the coming annihilation of the free world while displaying his great nostalgia for the Habsburg Empire into which he was born and his ingrained fear of nationalism in any form.
Set in Vienna in the early part of the twentieth century, Zipper
and His Father is a compelling and wonderfully atmospheric
portrayal of a childhood friend, Arnold Zipper, and his father, as
seen through the eyes of a young boy. The Zipper family welcome the
arrival of their son's friend and the boy is fascinated by their
cosy suburban life. Zipper Senior, a violin-maker and travelling
salesman, is determined that the boys will attain the success that
was denied to him. However, as the two friends mature their lives
take different paths - the army, university, early career choices
and a disastrous marriage to an aspiring actress all take their
toll - and each has a very different story to tell. From the
outskirts of Vienna to the Hollywood Hills, Zipper and His Father
charts the ambitions of a whole generation who, during period of
erratic social change, found themselves dreaming of what might have
been.
Set in the early days of the Russian Revolution, Tarabas tells the
story of Nicholas Tarabas, a young revolutionary, shamefully
dispatched from St Petersburg to New York by his outraged family.
During a visit to Coney Island's amusement park, the deeply
superstitious Tarabas learns from a gypsy that it is his destiny to
be both a murderer and a saint and, following a fight with a local
cafe owner, he flees back to Russia as war with Austria is
declared. Following his rapid promotion to captain, Tarabas gains a
fearful reputation among his soldiers and the local villagers,
until a miraculous discovery unleashes a chain of events that see
him undergo a final, dramatic transformation. It is Roth's special
gift that, in Tarabas's fulfilling of his tragic destiny, the
larger movements of history find their perfect expression in the
fate of one man.
'Every man had not only a weak spot but also a criminal one' At his
wife's insistence, upstanding citizen and artillery officer Anselm
Eibenschutz leaves his beloved Austro-Hungarian army and takes up a
civilian post, as Inspector of Weights and Measures in a remote
backwater near the Russian border. At first he does everything by
the book, but gradually he finds himself adrift in a world of petty
corruption, bribery and drunkenness - and undone by his passion for
the beautiful gypsy Euphemia. A haunting evocation of Eastern
Europe's borderlands in the early twentieth century, Weights and
Measures is also the story of the disintegration of a good man.
Translated by David Le Vay
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