Joseph Roth

7 May, 2026 830 German and related literatures

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.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

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) Google Books →
  • Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth
    Keiron Pim (Granta, 2022) Google Books →
  • 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) Google Books →
  • Collected Shorter Fiction
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2001) Google Books →
  • Rebellion
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2000) Google Books →
  • The Radetzky March
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2022) Google Books →
  • The Legend of the Holy Drinker
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2022) Google Books →
  • The Wandering Jews
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2001) Google Books →
  • What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2022) Google Books →
  • The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2015) Google Books →
  • Reports from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France 1925-1939
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2004) Google Books →
  • The Emperor's Tomb
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2013) Google Books →
  • The String of Pearls
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 1999) Google Books →
  • The White Cities: Reports From France 1925-1939
    Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2013) Google Books →
  • Weights and Measures
    Joseph Roth (trans. David Le Vay) (Pushkin Press, 2024) Google Books →
  • Flight Without End
    Joseph Roth (trans. Daved Le Vay and Beatrice Musgrave) (Pushkin Press, 2024) Google Books →
  • The Coral Merchant: Essential Stories
    Joseph Roth (trans. Ruth Martin) (Pushkin Press, 2020) Google Books →
  • On the End of the World
    Joseph Roth (trans Will Stone) (Pushkin Press, 2019) Google Books →
  • Job: The Story of a Simple Man
    Joseph Roth (trans. Dorothy Thompson) (Granta, 2022) Google Books →
  • Joseph Roth: Eine Biographie
    Wilhelm Von Sternburg (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m002vyjt

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

Auto-category: 833.912 (German fiction, 1900-1945)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. Joseph Roth, 1894-1939, was one of the great writers on the dying of the old order in Central Europe after the First World War, the loss of homeland and the horror of what was to come.