What I Saw: Reports From Berlin 1920-33

(Paperback)

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Description

In 1920, Joseph Roth, the most renowned German correspondent of his age, arrived in Berlin, the capital of the Weimar Republic. He produced a series of impressionistic and political writings that influenced an entire generation of writers, including Thomas Mann and the young Christopher Isherwood. Roth, like no other German writer of his time, ventured beyond Berlin's official veneer to the heart of the city, chronicling the lives of its forgotten inhabitants - the Jewish immigrants, the criminals, the bathhouse denizens, and the nameless dead who filled the morgues.

Warning early on of the threat posed by the Nazis, Roth evoked a landscape of moral bankruptcy and debauched beauty, creating in the process an unforgettable portrait of a city.

Reviews

The value of these feuilletons has nothing to do with typographical perspective, only with their non-stop brilliance, irresistible charm and continuing relevance -- Jeffrey Eugenides * New York Times *
This is a marvellous book, and a welcome addition to the ever-growing canon of Roth's work in English. It offers proof, if proof were needed, that he is as brilliant and original a journalist as he is a storyteller, casting his eye and cocking his ear where lesser writers never venture -- Paul Bailey * Sunday Times *
Keen-eyed and inquisitive... [Roth's] reports form Weimar-era Berlin capture in diamond-glitter prose the booming, brash capital -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *
An instant classic -- Roy Foster * Financial Times *
A splendid and necessary book -- Nicholas Lezard
A supreme observer, a cynical romantic with a flair for prophecy and an understanding of the slow fester of moral outrage... Outstanding * Irish Times *
Thrilling... [Roth's] slivers of Berlin life during the Weimar Republic catch a city juddering with a sense of its own modernity, even as he listens for sighs escaping through the cracks * Observer *
It is the eye for the telling detail that ends up astonishing us the most...a splendid and necessary book * Guardian *
This dazzling selection of his eye-witness accounts of the chaos, sleazy defiance and despair that summed up the short-lived Weimar Republic shimmers with lyric irony and rage * Irish Times *
Often abstract and sometimes melancholy, this book chronicles Berlin's diastolic years: the relaxed hedonistic interval between the blood-pounding systoles of two world wars... [Roth] captures atmosphere as precious few modern journalists can * Independent on Sunday *
Roth was the poet of Berlin streetlife in the 1920s. It gives some idea of the sophistication of Weimar culture that these philosophical, challenging and often fantastical pieces of writing by Roth (wonderfully translated by the poet Michael Hofmann) were originally newspaper columns * Evening Standard *
Roth writes as if Walter Benjamin had teamed up with Monsieur Hulot. He understands how perspective and value vanish in the modern city * Guardian *
Superbly written, each compacted scene revealing some fresh angle on modern life as it was emerging in the chaos of Weimar Germany...On almost every page there is a sentence you want to read aloud to someone * New Statesman *
What I Saw collects the best of Roth's journalism, where 'reportage' is a dream union of theory and poetry, somewhere between the insights of Walter Benjamin and Maeve Brennan's New Yorker essays * Time Out *
[The] attraction is part curiosity, part genuine historical interest, a delight in the turn of phrase of a major novelist and the glimpses of decay and of disillusion which would contribute to the fall of the Weimar Republic... Read this book, but let it be the bridge to the novels of a fine and neglected writer * Morning Star *
At times his sentences are perfect, near poetry in syntax and diction...poignant and prescient * Kirkus Reviews *
Roth brings alive the sights, sounds and smells of Berlin with the deftest touch of his pen... A master of compression, as of compassion... This book is a treat * Literary Review *
It seems Roth foresaw it all. Disturbing to the point of mesmerism in its power of observation, this is one of the most valuable collections of writing Granta has ever published * Good Book Guide *
Roth offers fascinating and idiosyncratic glimpses of a new urban modernity. Translator Michael Hofmann and publisher Granta have rescued Roth from obscurity by dusting down and translating a string of his novels as well as these striking essays...with the journalism they have struck gold * Tribune *

Author Bio

JOSEPH ROTH (1894-1939) was a prolific journalist and novelist. One of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, his work traces the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the rising fascist threat in Europe. On Hitler's assumption of power, he was obliged to leave Germany for Paris, where he died in poverty a few years later. His books include What I Saw, Job, The White Cities, The String of Pearls and The Radetzky March, all published by Granta Books.

MICHAEL HOFMANN is the highly acclaimed translator of Joseph Roth, Franz Kafka, Hans Fallada, Bertolt Brecht, and many more. A poet and essayist, he also teaches at the University of Florida.