Lontano da dove: Joseph Roth e la tradizione ebraico-orientale (Far From Where?: Joseph Roth and East European Jewish Tradition)

Magris, Claudio. Lontano da dove: Joseph Roth e la tradizione ebraico-orientale (Far From Where?: Joseph Roth and East European Jewish Tradition). Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1971. First edition. Large octavo. 317, [9]pp. Original printed wrappers. A terminal alcoholic who drank himself to death in 1939 at age 44, Joseph Roth, whose ideas about Judaism were often complex and contradictory, has long been an object of fascination. His work, and especially “Radetzky March,” which is a 1932 military opus steeped in nostalgia for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and a book-length reportage, “The Wandering Jews,” from 1927, about Eastern European Jewish migration, has benefited for decades from lucid commentators. Notable among them is the Italian Germanist Claudio Magris, whose 1971 “Lontano da dove: Joseph Roth e la tradizione ebraico-orientale” (Far From Where?: Joseph Roth and East European Jewish Tradition) is still untranslated into English. Using letters, as well as literary works, Magris locates the source of Roth’s permanent anguish in the double loss of the Jewish shtetl and an idealized Austro-Hungarian Empire. In Roth’s case, his shtetl was the Jewish community of Brody, Galicia, now in Western Ukraine, where a significant Jewish population would be murdered during World War II. Lower front corner bumped, thus slightly affecting very first pages throughout. Text in Italian. Wrappers and interior in good+ to very good condition. g+ to vg. Softcover. (38221) $50