The endless flight of Joseph Roth

episode #3 of Four Great 20th-Century Writers too Little Read in the Anglosphere

During the 1920s and 1930s, no journalist — perhaps no writer — mastered the art of 'skewering' scenes, people, and situations with a witty phrase or an ironical expression better than Joseph Roth.

Born in the easternmost region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1919 found him — an 'Eastern Jew' — potentially stateless and homeless. And yet he survived. Even today, his articles for German newspapers, reporting from all corners of the deeply troubled continent, have more power to transport us in imagination to the people and places of that era than any more formal body of writing.

The tumultuous times in which he lived transformed his youthful political opinions. His later novels and short stories were laments for the lost world of stability — before the deluge that was the Great War.

In this episode, we dive into his character and his personal tragedy — both of them emblematic of the cursed times in which he lived.