num_pages: 49
description: This book, one of the most haunting things that Roth ever composed, was published in 1939, the 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: Literary Fiction, Modern Classics, Fiction, Novels, German Literature, 20th Century, Literature, Novella, Classics, Short Stories
ratings_count: 5121
places: Paris
publisher: Pan Books