Joseph Roth

Translated by Michael Hofmann

The Wandering Jews

A masterpiece of twentieth-century history, only recently rediscovered in Germany, appears for the first time in English.

Every few decades, a book is published that shapes Jewish consciousness. One thinks of Elie Wiesel's Night or Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz. In 1927, however, before these works were written, Joseph Roth (1894-1939) composed The Wandering Jews. At the time a correspondent in Berlin, emotionally ravaged by the whirlwind events of Weimar Germany, Roth examined the concept of Jewish identity and questioned what lay in store for it. Whether writing of the schism between Eastern and Western Jews, warning of the false comforts of assimilation, or eerily foreseeing the horrors posed by Nazism, The Wandering Jews remains as unforgettably vital today as it was when first published.

"No other writer, not excepting Thomas Mann, has come so close to achieving the wholeness that Lukacs cites as our impossible aim."—Nadine Gordimer

"What a marvelous writer! Read him now. You can thank me later."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World