Joseph Roth – författare

Johann Strauss Radetzky-Marsch anger ton och titel för denna storslagna släktkrönika som skildrar tre generationer av familjen Trotta under dubbelmonarkins nedgång och fall i Österrike-Ungern. 

Handlingen inleds år 1859 med slaget vid Solferino, där farfadern Josef, då ung löjtnant, räddar den unge kejsaren och därefter adlas till baron. Josef har kejsardömet att tacka för allt och förblir genom livet dess trogne tjänare. Efter honom följer sonen, juristen och kretspresidenten Frans. Han är lika trogen den habsburgska monarkin, som under hans livstid utsätts för stora slitningar mellan nationalism och konkurrerande ideologier. Sonsonen, den unge och världsfrånvände Carl Josef, stupar under första världskrigets inledande dag. 

Radetzkymarschen tar sin början då det habsburgska herraväldet börjar vittra sönder och avslutas då den gamle kejsaren begravs i Kapucinerkryptan. Romanen utkom första gången 1932 och anses i dag vara en av de stora klassikerna inom världslitteraturen.

Boken har även filmatiserats, bland annat 1994 med Max von Sydow i huvudrollen. 

JOSEPH ROTH (1894-1939) föddes i en judisk familj i dåvarande Österrike-Ungern. Som ung var han socialist men med åren kom han att bli konservativ, och framhöll fördelarna med den så kallade dubbelmonarkin som han växt upp under. Roth ansåg att statsbildningen genom sin multietniska grund stod som garant för utsatta folkgruppers rättigheter. Under bokbålen i Tyskland på 1930-talet brändes många exemplar av hans verk och Roth avled som politisk flykting i Paris. 

Denösterrikiskeförfattarenoch journalisten Joseph Roth (18941939) framstår alltmer som en av det förra århundradets verkligt stora berättare. I de fyra romanerna i denna volym Spindelnätet, Den stumme profeten, Den falska vikten och Kapucinerkryptan får vi följa med till ett Europa som drabbas av dramatiska politiska och sociala förändringar, krig och umbäranden.

Vi får uppleva den döende Habsburgs­monarkin, första världs­kriget, ryska revolutionen och fascismens frammarsch. Men framför allt: vi lär känna människorna som levde, dog, älskade och hatade under denna tid och som tack vare Roths mästerliga berättarkonst blir smärtsamt närvarande.

'A masterly performance' Evening Standard

Joseph Roth's dark fable about a man torn between resolve and restlessness in Eastern Europe's borderlands

In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Anselm Eibenschütz is appointed inspector of weights and measures in a remote border town. There he encounters a shadowy world of gamblers and smugglers - and discovers his wife is pregnant by another man. Right and wrong prove hard to judge, as Eibenschütz is drawn into a destructive affair of his own.

In this late masterpiece, Joseph Roth depicts the slow corruption of a decent man at the lawless edge of a crumbling world.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by David Le Vay.

JOSEPH ROTH (1894-1939) was born into a Jewish family in the small town of Brody in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied first in Lemberg and then in Vienna, and served in the Austrian army during World War I. He later worked as a journalist in Vienna and Berlin, travelling widely, staying in hotels and living out of suitcases, while also becoming a prolific writer of fiction. Roth left Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933 and settled in Paris, where he died just before the outbreak of World War II. As well as his masterpiece The Radetzky March, he was the author of over two dozen works of fiction and non-fiction, including On the End of the World, The Coral Merchant and Flight Without End, all published by or forthcoming from Pushkin Press.

DAVID LE VAY (1915-2001) was a consultant surgeon in the NHS for over thirty years. Combining his medical work with a literary career, he authored medical textbooks and biographies of prominent historical surgeons, as well as translating works from French, German, Spanish and Latin.

Joseph Roth's sensibility-both clear-eyed and nostalgic, harshly realistic and tenderly humane-produced some of the most distinctive fiction of the twentieth century. This collection of his most essential stories, in exquisite new translations by Ruth Martin, showcases the astonishing range and power of his short stories and novellas.

In prose of aching beauty and precision, Roth shows us isolated souls pursuing lost ideals and impossible desires. Forced to remove a bust of the fallen Austrian emperor from his house, an eccentric old count holds a funeral for it and intends to be buried in the same plot himself; a humble coral merchant, dissatisfied with his life and longing for the sea, chooses to adulterate his wares with false coral, with catastrophic results; young Fini, just entering the haze of early sexuality, falls into an unsatisfying relationship with an older musician. With the greatest craft and sensitivity, Roth unfolds the many fragilities of the human heart.

'One of the greatest writers of the first half of the tormented 20th century' - Simon Schama

'An almost perfect book' Rolling Stone

At the close of the Great War, a captured Austrian soldier escapes Siberia and sets off in search of his fiancée, her photograph sewn into the lining of his coat. But the old order has vanished, and he is swept along on the current of revolution: first surrendering to his love for a Red Army beauty, then drifting phantom-like through Europe's cities.

Here Joseph Roth tells one of his most personal stories - that of a man cast adrift in a changed world.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by David Le Vay and Beatrice Musgrave.

JOSEPH ROTH (1894-1939) was born into a Jewish family in the small town of Brody in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied first in Lemberg and then in Vienna, and served in the Austrian army during World War I. He later worked as a journalist in Vienna and Berlin, travelling widely, staying in hotels and living out of suitcases, while also becoming a prolific writer of fiction. Roth left Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933 and settled in Paris, where he died just before the outbreak of World War II. As well as his masterpiece The Radetzky March, he was the author of over two dozen works of fiction and non-fiction, including On the End of the World, The Coral Merchant and Weights and Measures, all published by or forthcoming from Pushkin Press.

DAVID LE VAY (1915-2001) was a consultant surgeon in the NHS for over thirty years. Combining his medical work with a literary career, he authored medical textbooks and biographies of prominent historical surgeons, as well as translating works from French, German, Spanish and Latin.