This collection showcases the renowned author’s “genius for metaphor, his compassionate irony, and his historical and psychological insight” (The Wall Street Journal).
Austrian author Joseph Roth was one of Europe’s most powerful and perceptive literary voices during the turbulent period between WWI and WWII. This collection presents three of his most enduring works of fiction. “The Legend of the Holy Drinker” tells the story of a dissolute vagrant who is uplifted for a short time by a series of miracles. Written in the final days of Roth’s life, it is a novella of sparkling lucidity and humanity. “Fallmerayer the Stationmaster” and “The Bust of the Emperor” are Roth’s most acclaimed works of shorter fiction.
Joseph Roth was born in 1894 in a small Galician town on the eastern borders of the Hapsburg Empire. After serving in the Austro-Hungarian army from 1916 to 1918, he worked as a journalist in Vienna and in Berlin. He died in Paris in 1939, leaving behind thirteen novels as well as many stories and essays.