The latest addition to my website is Walter Kappacher‘s Der Fliegenpalast (Palace of Flies) the novel is set over ten days in August 1924 in the Austrian mountain resort of Bad Fusch and follows the Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal who is there to complete three of his works, two of which, we know, he … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Die Kapuzinergruft (The Emperor’s Tomb). This was the last novel he published in his lifetime, when he was living in exile, after the Nazis had annexed Austria. He died the following year. It is a sad and gloomy tale focussing on Franz Ferdinand Trotta, cousin of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Die Geschichte der 1002. Nacht (The String of Pearls; The Tale of the 1002nd Night). This is another excellent novel by Roth, focussing on three characters whose life all takes a turn for the worse, particularly as a result of the visit of the Shah of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Die hundert Tage (The Ballad of the Hundred; later: The Hundred Days). This novel tells the story of Napoleon’s hundred days. i.e. from when he fled Elba to his defeat at Waterloo and surrender to the British. The book was criticised when it first appeared in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Hiob (Job, the Story of a Simple Man). This is a modern (late 19th/early20th century) updating of the story of the Biblical Job, whom God made suffer, in order to test him. Our Job is Mendel Singer, a Russian Jew, living in Zuchnow, a fictitious town … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Katja Perat‘s Mazohistka (The Masochist). The novel is narrated by Nadezhda von Moser. She was found as a baby, abandoned, in a basket by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the man whom Richard von Krafft-Ebing named masochism after. Sacher-Masoch brought her up but he was neither a good father or … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Radetzkymarsch (The Radetzky March). This is a superb novel, following the downfall of Austria from its defeat at the Battle of Solferino in 1859 to the death of Emperor Franz Joseph I, who led his troops at Solferino, and who lived till 1916. Along with the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Hotel Savoy (Hotel Savoy). It tells the story of Gabriel Dan who, in 1919, is returning from three years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia. The novel is set entirely in the now Polish town of Łódź which is facing something of an upheaval – loss … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Robert Menasse‘s Die Hauptstadt (Capital). This is a satire on the European Union, its officials and some of the nationalities who are part of it. The story starts in Place Sainte-Cathérine, in the centre of Brussels, where most of the main characters are to be found at the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Heinrich Eggerth‘s Die Papierrose [The Paper Rose]. It is narrated by a man whose almost ten year old daughter has died of a brain tumour. He visits her grave almost every day and talks to her, over a period of many years. The books is his (obviously one-sided) … Read more