The Legend of the Holy Drinker - Hardcover

Roth, Joseph; Hofmann, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1862073813 ISBN 13: 9781862073814

Publisher: Granta Books, 2000

Synopsis

This was first 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 work. It is a miracle-tale, in which the vagrant Andreas, after living under bridges, has a series of lucky breaks that lift him briefly onto a different plane.

About this title

Review

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was a superb writer whose compact yet lambent fiction deserves the highest praise (and a much wider readership). The Legend of the Holy Drinker, written and published in the year of his death, is a deeply affecting tale of Andreas, an alcoholic like Roth, who drinks himself to death in the rough houses of Paris.

Michael Hoffman's superb translation has rightly garnered much praise. Hoffman stresses that, although often esteemed for the simplicity of his style, Roth is no brutalist: it is the economy and the directness of his writing that is so moving and makes his work so special. Despite its melancholic subject matter The Legend is an uplifting novella.

Throughout the tale Andreas, previously an impoverished vagrant, is continuously visited by miraculous good fortune that illuminates the last days of his mendicant existence and lift him, and the reader, to a new understanding of his (our) dissolution. Roth was a peerless writer and Granta must be praised for bringing him back to our attention in such lovely volumes. --Mark Thwaite

Review

'Poignant.' --Daily Mail

Edition details

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1862073813
• ISBN 13: 9781862073814
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 112