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A review by mark_lm
The Wandering Jews by Joseph Roth
3.0
Fascinating nonfiction from Roth only translated into English about 20 years ago.
Roth was a Jewish journalist and novelist. This book is a heartfelt view of the Jews of Eastern Europe in the 1920s in the aftermath of the first world war. The author’s writing is characterized by an apparent love of Eastern European Jewish culture and sardonic comments directed at those who looked down on them, especially westernized secular Jews. The key that greatly increased my appreciation of the book is a few lines in the translator’s forward that tell us what the reader wouldn’t otherwise know - Roth was born in Galicia, moved to Vienna, served in the Austro-Hungarian army in WWI, and became a well-known journalist writing for German newspapers. So the outline of the book is autobiographical, it is nostalgic, and, to some extent, Roth’s sardonic comments are about the people in his own adult world or maybe himself.
Roth was a Jewish journalist and novelist. This book is a heartfelt view of the Jews of Eastern Europe in the 1920s in the aftermath of the first world war. The author’s writing is characterized by an apparent love of Eastern European Jewish culture and sardonic comments directed at those who looked down on them, especially westernized secular Jews. The key that greatly increased my appreciation of the book is a few lines in the translator’s forward that tell us what the reader wouldn’t otherwise know - Roth was born in Galicia, moved to Vienna, served in the Austro-Hungarian army in WWI, and became a well-known journalist writing for German newspapers. So the outline of the book is autobiographical, it is nostalgic, and, to some extent, Roth’s sardonic comments are about the people in his own adult world or maybe himself.