num_pages: 100
description: This book, one of the most haunting things that Joseph Roth ever composed, was published in 1939, the same year the author died. Like Andreas, the hero of the story, Roth drank himself to death in Paris, but this is not an autobiographical confession. It is a secular miracle-tale, in which the vagrant Andreas, after living under bridges, has a series of lucky breaks that lift him briefly onto a different plane of existence. The novella is extraordinarily compressed, dry-eyed and witty, despite its melancholic subject-matter.
language: English
title: The Legend of The Holy Drinker
titlecomplete: The Legend of The Holy Drinker
characters: Andreas
genres: Fiction, Short Stories, German Literature, Literature, Classics, Novels, 20th Century, Novella, Literary Fiction, Modern Classics
ratings_count: 5122
places: Paris
publisher: Granta Books