Joseph Roth: Peerless Novelist of Exile

Joseph Roth, one of the great Jewish writers of the 20th century, is still not well-known today, but recent translations have brought his work to an English-speaking audience. Born in the northeastern reaches of the Austro-Hungarian empire in what is now Ukraine, he spent most of his adult life in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris and was a prolific author of essays and novels. Much of his fiction deals with the lost world of pre-World War I Austria and the trauma of the empire's collapse. Anka Muhlstein comments on the range of Roth's literary abilities: