Synopses & Reviews
From master storyteller Joseph Roth, author of The Radetzky March, comes an intense, lyrical work about love, hate, and everything in between, in a brand-new translation A young man walks into a café in 1930s Paris. Listening to the babble of Russian émigrés gossiping around him, he overhears people casually discussing a "murderer" called Golubtschik sitting right there in the café. Intrigued and appalled, the young man settles down to listen to Golubtschik’s life story after closing time. He spins a dark and captivating tale, detailing his story from its humble beginnings. The illegitimate son of a duke, he grew up with his poverty-stricken mother and her husband, always wondering how different his life might have been if he been brought up by the duke in luxurious surroundings. Recruited into the Russian secret service after a brush with the law, he travels to Paris and falls in love with the beautiful Lutetia, a volatile and enchanting woman. It is here in Paris that Golubtschik stumbles upon his legitimate half-brother in bed with Lutetia, and flies into a terrible rage. Beating them and leaving them for dead, he gets away with the crime and earns his reputation as a murderer. But as he finishes his tale in the Parisian café all these years later, there comes a twist to the tale which not even Golubtschik could have foreseen.
Review
"Roth's swift style makes things happen naturally; we see, hear, smell and believe. A joyous storyteller's gift remains precariously alive within the pessimism of decay and loss. Although the teller of the tale says 'there is no end there, no break—always continuity and connection,' his art is kind and draws us to a satisfying conclusion after the luridness of events." —New York Times on Hotel Savoy
About the Author
Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was an Austrian novelist best known for his family saga Radetzky March and for his novel of Jewish life, Job. He fought in the Austrian army in World War I, and worked as a novelist and journalist in Frankfurt, becoming a leading Jewish intellectual of the era. With the rise of Nazism, he lived the rest of his life in exile. Jonathan Katz is the translator of The Lake of the Bees.