Roth, Joseph

Roth, Joseph or Józef (yō`zĕf rōt), 1894–1939, Austrian novelist, essayist, journalist, and publisherb. Brody, Galicia. An outspoken critic of Hitler and militarism, he moved to Paris in 1933. Roth became one of Europe's leading journalists in the era between the World Wars. His novels, though basically conservative, reflect political awareness and skepticism. They include Hotel Savoy (1924, tr. 1986), Rebellion (1924, tr. 1999), and Die Flucht ohne Ende (1927; tr. Flight without End, 1930, 1977). His best-known novels are Hiob (1930; tr. Job, 1933), concerning the struggle of Eastern European Jews, and Radetzkymarsch (1932; tr. The Radetzky March, 1933, 1974, 1985), an ironic portrait of the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that is generally considered his masterpiece. Roth's Collected Stories and a collection of his essays on Berlin (1920–33) were published in English in 2002, as were his Parisian essays (1925–39) in 2004.

Bibliography

See studies by C. Mathew (1984) and S. Rosenfeld (2002).