Synopsis
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 his schoolboy years 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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Review
'A wonderful selection ... this superb collection of letters will stand as a perfect introduction to the work itself' --William Boyd, Sunday Times
`These are extraordinary letters, as finely written as any letters of the century, beautifully and sensitively rendered by Michael Hofmann' --Philip Hensher, Spectator
'A grand tribute to one of the most grievously disappointed literary geniuses of the 20th century' --Daily Telegraph
`A fascinating picture of a writer who only understood the world when he was writing. Michael Hofmann's translation is superb' --Sunday Telegraph
'This heartbreaking volume testifies to the towering humanity of one of the finest writers of the 20th century'
--Irish Times
'Michael Hofmann is to be congratulated on resurrecting Roth as the Everyman of Emigration' --Literary Review
'With excellent biographical essays, these letters prove the ideal medium to get to know a man who resisted conventional biography'-Guardian
'Hofmann's selection offers a portrait of Roth that is funny, touching and sometimes distressing' --Independent
`A superb edition ... these letters give us great insight into one of the outstanding writers of the 20th century' --Jewish Chronicle
'Roth's artistic duty was always to the truth; his remarkable letters are no different' --Independent on Sunday
`Hofmann has once again added hugely to our knowledge of a great and uncompromising truth-teller' --Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
JOSEPH ROTH (1894-1939) was the great elegist of the cosmopolitan, tolerant and doomed Central European culture that flourished in the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Born into a Jewish family in Galicia, on the eastern edge of the empire, he was a prolific political journalist and novelist. On Hitler's assumption of power, he was obliged to leave Germany and he died in poverty in Paris. His novels include What I Saw, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, The Emperor's Tomb and The Radetzky March, all published by Granta Books. Michael Hofmann is the highly acclaimed translator of Joseph Roth, Wolfgang Koeppen, Kafka, and Brecht and the author of several books of poems and book of criticism. He has translated nine previous books by Joseph Roth. He lives in London and Hamburg.
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