The Collected Shorter Fiction Of Joseph Roth

Jospeh Roth is a modern master of the laconic, emblematic narrative – an artist responding to the madness of inter-war Europe with an unsentimental humanism. His prose is quick, lucid and ironic; his fictions read like realist fables. Beneath these polished surfaces there are darker currents – of violence, hatred, racism and personal loss – that cannot be ignored. Granta Books here presents Roth’s collected stories and novellas in new translations by the poet Michael Hofmann. They include ‘Fallermayr the Stationmaster’ and ‘The Bust of the Emperor’, bitter comedies of the last days of the Hapsburgs; ‘Strawberries’, the story of a small town in Galicia; and many other astonishing shorter fictions.

Roth is one of the great addictive writers of the first half of the twentieth century. He is witty, profound, surprising and melancholy. The paradox is this: no one is fundamentally more pessimistic; no writer is more affirmative

Scotsman

The poet Michael Hofmann has performed such an invaluable service that it's a shame that the minting of medals has gone out of fashion

Evening Standard

[These stories and novellas] clearly illustrate the qualities that make his prose so distinctive

Sunday Telegraph

The Author

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 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, The Emperor’s Tomb and The Radetzky March, all published by Granta Books.

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The Translator

Michael Hofmann is a poet, translator and critic. His latest book of poems is One Lark, One Horse. He recently translated Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Kairos.

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