Joseph Roth – a self-confessed Eastern Jew with an affinity to Catholicism, a pacifist who volunteered to serve in World War One, a sometimes committed socialist and soon an advocate of a new Habsburg monarchy, analytical journalist and narrator of legends about his own life, broad-minded moralist and exceptionally gifted polemicist: few 20th century writers were as contradictory, or as clever or skilled at constantly reinventing their biography and view of the world as Roth. Well-known publicist and author Wilhelm von Sternburg sheds light on Roth’s myth-shrouded self-perception. He exposes Roth’s roots in Eastern Judaism and the reasons for Roth’s affinity with the Habsburg monarchy, and he traces the melancholic irony and cheerful pessimism of this constantly disappointed humanist. He writes of Roth’s rise, the bitter years of emigration, his determined journalistic struggle against Nazi barbarity, of his wife’s madness and of Roth’s physical decline. Von Sternburg also makes enlightening references to Kleist, Hölderlin, Heine or Kafka and interprets Roth’s novels, his homelessness and lifelong desire to escape.
This major Roth biography is a rich, absorbingly written life history and an exceptionally precise picture of the times. Linguistically brilliant and with a profound psychological and historical knowledge, Wilhelm von Sternburg links Joseph Roth’s biography with the story of his work and contemporary history. A book that makes you want to read everything Joseph Roth’s has ever written all over again!
