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A01=Joseph Roth
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Anton Chekhov stories
Austrian literature
Austro-Hungarian empire
Author_Joseph Roth
automatic-update
B06=Ruth Martin
Category1=Fiction
Category=FBC
Category=FC
Category=FYB
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_classics
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Essential collection
Essential Stories
European classics
Franz Kafka stories
Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth Job
Joseph Roth short stories
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
SN=Pushkin Collection
softlaunch
The Legend of the Holy Drinker
The Leviathan
The Radetzky March
twentieth century literature

Product details

  • ISBN 9781782275978
  • Dimensions: 120 x 165mm
  • Publication Date: 30 Apr 2020
  • Publisher: Pushkin Press
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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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.

Joseph Roth was born into a Jewish family in the small town of Brody in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied first in Lemberg and then in Vienna, and served in the Austrian army during World War I. He later worked as a journalist in Vienna and Berlin, travelling widely, staying in hotels and living out of suitcases, while also being a prolific writer of fiction, including the novels Job (1930) and The Radetzky March (1932). Roth left Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933 and settled in Paris, where he died in 1939.

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