Peter Owen Modern Classic
3 total works
Weights and Measures was the third Roth novel to be translated into English and one of the the last he wrote, as he drank himself to death in unhappy exile in France. It is a fable about the disintegration of a good man. At the insistence of his wife, Eibenschutz leaves his job as an artilleryman in the Austro-Hungarian army for a civilian job as the Inspector of Weights and Measures in a remote territory near the Russian border. Attempting to exercise some proper rectitude in his trade duties he is at a loss in a world of smugglers, profiteers and small crooks. Eibenschutz soon finds he can no longer distinguish law from justice. When he discovers that his wife is pregnant by his own clerk, he spends more time away from home. Spending his hours at the border tavern, he find himself hopelessly drawn to a beautiful gypsy woman, Euphemia. But she is prepared to share the bed of the landlord and Eibenshutz's enemy, Jadlowker, an unprincipled profiteer who has made the tavern a beacon for local smuggling activity...
The Silent Prophet was written as the result of Joseph Roth's visit to Moscow in 1926 when speculation about the fate of Trotsky was rife. Roth refered to this work as his 'Trotsky novel', but the experiences of books' hero, the Trotsky-like Friederich Kargan, are as recognisably those of a less well-known Jewish outsider, a perpetual exile searching for a place in the new Europe and a set of values to counter his own scepticism and growing disallusionment - Joseph Roth himself. Because he is born illegitimate, Friederich Kargan lacks even a social identity. Moving to Vienna he becomes involved both in revolutionary agitation and a love affair. Caught by the authorities on his first trip to Russia, he endures a Siberian interlude before escaping. Moving among various plotters and underground cabals across Europe, he eventually returns to Russia after the February Revolution. He becomes leader of the Red Army, but comes to realise during the civil war that the revolution seems to be over before it has begun; the cause has been betrayed, yesterday's proletariat has become today's bourgeoise; exile might offer the only choice.
The Silent Prophet is a beautifully descriptive journey from loneliness into an illusory worldliness and back into loneliness. It is a haunting study in alienation by a master of realistic imagination. The Silent Prophet by Joseph Roth is a haunting and poetic novel of alienation. In this excellent translation we see Roth draw on his own personal experiences as an 'outsider', as well as those of Leon Trotsky - hence Roth himself called this his 'Trotsky novel'. Although left unpublished until after Roth's death, this novel remains a true classic.
The Silent Prophet is a beautifully descriptive journey from loneliness into an illusory worldliness and back into loneliness. It is a haunting study in alienation by a master of realistic imagination. The Silent Prophet by Joseph Roth is a haunting and poetic novel of alienation. In this excellent translation we see Roth draw on his own personal experiences as an 'outsider', as well as those of Leon Trotsky - hence Roth himself called this his 'Trotsky novel'. Although left unpublished until after Roth's death, this novel remains a true classic.
Flight Without End is the story of a young ex-soldier''s alienation and his search for identity and home in a world which has changed out of all recognition from the one in which he gew up'