The Wandering Jews

(Paperback)

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Description

Granta's republication of Joseph Roth's novels has created a new generation of readers for this great novelist. Roth was also celebrated as a journalist, and The Wandering Jews is his portrait of the Jews of Eastern Europe: of their poverty, their towns and trades, their feast days and mystical rabbis. This was a community living under the shadow of extermination, and Roth was aware of the threat. Michael Hofmann, an award-winning poet, has again translated a neglected classic.

Reviews

This [is a] rich little book ... Roth's gift of phrasing, which can switch without warning from lyrical sentiment to irony, never deserts him * Observer *
Almost every page has flashes of the novelist's descriptive wit and the trained journalist's eye for a story * Sunday Telegraph *
It shows some prophetic insights, and some illusions * Evening Standard *
The Wandering Jews reconnects with the rich complexities of European Jewish culture before it was swallowed up by the Holocaust. Roth's brilliant and penetrating analysis proved tragically prophetic. At this distance, it gives a timeless perspective on the vulnerability of dispossessed people everywhere * The Times *
Of the many books written about the Jewish people few have approached the clarity and exactness achieved in this short, astonishing study. Roth's reportage remains vivid and pertinent. As a cultural study of a homeless, persecuted race it is as perceptive as it is practical. His lightness of touch always prevails. Above all the fiction is unforgettable, the prose fluid and beautiful. It must also be said he is a forgotten master - the fiction is evocative, atmospheric and accessible. Read everything he has written - and wonder at one of literature's most enduring, beguiling and deserving voices -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
Roth ... is one of the greatest. Why he was forgotten, I have no idea ... In The Wandering Jews, a book dozens of times larger than itself in love and argument and stern sympathy ... [Roth] also demonstrates that war is not necessary to break our faith. Only civilisation is. Only a writer who had chosen to live with that sound of shattering could do that * New Statesman *
This new book contains superb reportage * Irish Times *

Author Bio

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was the great elegist of the cosmopolitan and doomed Central European culture that flourished in the dying days of the Austrian Empire. His books include The Legend of the Holy Drinker, Confession of a Murderer, Flight Without End, Right and Left, The Emperor's Tomb, The String of Pearls and The Radetzky March.