Hotel Savoy

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Description

The central character of this novel, Gabriel Dan, is a former soldier in the Austrian army who returns from a Siberian prison camp, some time after the First World War. He arrives in an unnamed town that might be in Poland, at the gates of Europe, and lodges in the huge Hotel Savoy. The owner is absent; the guests are odd, deranged, longing for salvation, dreaming of a release from the unbearable tensions of their lives. A former citizen who has made his fortune in the USA is rumoured to be on his way home; murder and chaos ensue. Written in 1932, Hotel Savoy is a dark, witty parable of Europe on the verge of fascism and war: Roth at his best. 'Roth can pack more into a few pages than lesser writers can do in a few hundred.' Times Literary Supplement

Author Bio

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 Austrian Empire. He wrote thirteen novels, including The Radetzky March. His novels The String of Pearls and Rebellion are also published by Granta Books.