The String Of Pearls
By (Author) Joseph Roth
Translated by Michael Hofmann
Granta Books
Granta Books
23rd April 1999
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
833.912
272
Width 130mm, Height 197mm, Spine 16mm
200g
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.
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, Right and Left, The Emperor's Tomb, The String of Pearls and The Radetzky March, all published by Granta Books. Michael Hofmann is a poet. He has translated the works of many writers, including Brecht, Kafka, Fallada and Roth. He teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville.