Joseph Roth

7 May, 2026 940 History of Europe

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the great writers on Central Europe after the first world war and on the dying of the old orders with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. As a German speaking Jew from Brody in the north-eastern edge of that Empire, which was then in Galicia, next in Poland and is now in Ukraine, Roth (1894 - 1939) was to spend his short life moving first to Lviv then to Vienna and finally to Paris via Berlin without ever finding a settled home. Roth explored the loss of homeland and anticipated the dangers of the new nationalism through his journalism and in his novels including Radetzky March, Job, Rebellion and Flight Without End, and his books were among the first the Nazis burned.

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Guests

  • Helen Chambers No other episodes
    Emeritus Professor of German at the University of St Andrews
  • Deborah Holmes No other episodes
    Associate Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Salzburg
  • Jon Hughes No other episodes
    Reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London

Reading list

  • Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth's Writing in the 1920s
    Jon Hughes (MHRA, 2006)
  • Joseph Roth: Leben und Werk in Bildern
    Heinz Lunzer and Victoria Lunzer-Talos (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1994)
  • Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth
    Keiron Pim (Granta, 2022)
  • Vienna Tales
    Joseph Roth (trans. Deborah Holmes, ed. Helen Constantine) (Oxford University Press, 2014)
  • A Life in Letters
    Joseph Roth (trans. and ed. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2012)
  • Collected Shorter Fiction
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2001)
  • Rebellion
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2000)
  • The Radetzky March
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2022)
  • The Legend of the Holy Drinker
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2022)
  • The Wandering Jews
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2001)
  • What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2022)
  • The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2015)
  • Reports from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France 1925-1939
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2004)
  • The Emperor's Tomb
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2013)
  • The String of Pearls
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 1999)
  • The White Cities: Reports From France 1925-1939
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2013)
  • Weights and Measures
    Joseph Roth (trans. David Le Vay) (Pushkin Press, 2024)
  • Flight Without End
    Joseph Roth (trans. Daved Le Vay and Beatrice Musgrave) (Pushkin Press, 2024)
  • The Coral Merchant: Essential Stories
    Joseph Roth (trans. Ruth Martin) (Pushkin Press, 2020)
  • On the End of the World
    Joseph Roth (trans Will Stone) (Pushkin Press, 2019)
  • Job: The Story of a Simple Man
    Joseph Roth (trans. Dorothy Thompson) (Granta, 2022)
  • Joseph Roth: Eine Biographie
    Wilhelm Von Sternburg (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009)

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Programme ID: m002vyjt

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002vyjt

Auto-category: 943.086 (History of Central Europe; 1918-1945)