Wandering Jews

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was the great elegist of the cosmopolitan and doomed Central European culture that flourished in the dying days of the Austrian Empire. His books include The Legend of the Holy Drinker, Confession of a Murderer, Flight Without End, Right and Left, The Emperor's Tomb, The String of Pearls and The Radetzky March.

This [is a] rich little book ... Roth's gift of phrasing, which can switch without warning from lyrical sentiment to irony, never deserts him