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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, The Emperor's Tomb and The Radetzky March, all published by Granta Books. Michael Hofmann is the highly acclaimed translator of Joseph Roth, Wolfgang Koeppen, Kafka, and Brecht and the author of several books of poems and book of criticism. He has translated nine previous books by Joseph Roth. He lives in London and Hamburg.
Fascinating... [An] all-inclusive picture of what it was like to be a writer who only understood the world when he was writing - and wrote magically beautiful books when he did -- Julian Evans * Sunday Telegraph * A Life in Letters, impeccably translated and edited by the poet Michael Hofmann, offers a vivid picture of Roth the man... A grand tribute to one of the most grievously disappointed literary geniuses of the 20th century -- Ian Thomson * Daily Telegraph * A wonderful selection... Engage with one of the most beguiling and intuitive minds that 20th-century literature has produced -- William Boyd * Sunday Times * This volume of letters will both move and dismay Roth readers while testifying to the towering humanity, warts and all, of one of the finest writers of the 20th century... For those who have not yet explored Roth's writings, now is the time -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times * These are extraordinary letters, as finely written as any letters of the century in a dark, impassioned, suffering cause -- Philip Hensher * Spectator * These letters prove the ideal medium to get to know a man who resisted conventional biography, occluding his own life in myth -- Lara Feigel * Guardian * If there is any justice in the world and Joseph Roth does at last find the mass reading public he deserves, the lion's share of credit will have to go to Michael Hofmann -- Simon Schama * Financial Times * It is a scandal that such an important correspondence should have waited more than four decades to be translated.... Michael Hoffman is to be congratulated on resurrecting Roth as the Everyman of Emigration -- Daniel Johnson * Literary Review * Roth's letters give us great insight into one of the outstanding writers of the 20th century and to the terrible times he lived through -- David Herman, Books of the Year * Jewish Chronicle * Roth ranks among the great writers of Mitteleuropa, and for English readers who love his work, this [book is] hugely valuable -- William Boyd * Sunday Times * A fascinating window on a disillusioned man and the times he lived through -- Alastair Mabbott * The Herald *
