Title: The hotel years /
Authors: Roth, Joseph, 1894-1939; Hofmann, Michael, 1957 August 25-; New Directions Publishing.
Year: 2015
Subjects: Roth, Joseph, Travel.; Essays, German Translations into English.; Europe Description and travel.; Europe Civilization
Abstract: The Hotel Years gathers sixty-four pieces--never before translated into English--from 1919 to 1939, beginning in Vienna just at the end of the First War, and ending in Paris with the Second War about to begin. Joseph Roth was the outstanding journalist and commentator of the day. Roth needed journalism to survive; in his six-volume collected works in German, there are three of fiction and three of journalism. He published an article on average two or three times a week. After 1921, he wrote mostly for the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung. They sent him on tours through Germany--the Inflation, the occupation, political assassinations, etc.--and abroad, to the USSR, Italy, Poland, Albania, etc., etc. The Hotel Years presents little sequences of feuilleton: on Hotels; Russia; Albania; Pains and Pleasures; Personalities; and the deteriorating international situation of the 1930s.
Contents: Envoi : A man reads the paper -- I. Germany : Of dogs and men -- Millionaire for an hour -- The umbrella -- The emigrants' ship -- The currency-reformed city -- Baltic tour -- Melancholy of a tram car in the Ruhr -- Smoke joins up the towns -- Germany in winter -- Retrospect of Magdeburg -- II. Sketches : The fraternity member -- Guillaume the Blond Negro -- Adventurers -- The mother -- Rose Gentschow -- Two Gypsy girls -- Grock -- The dapper traveller -- III. Austria and elsewhere : Bruck and Kiralyhida -- Journey through Galicia : people and place -- The Polish California -- Hotel Kopriva -- The all-powerful police -- Where the world war began -- The opened tomb -- His K. and K. Apostolic Majesty -- IV. USSA : The czarist émigrés -- The border at Niegoreloye -- Down the Volga to Astrakhan -- The wonders of Astrakhan -- Saint Petroleum -- V. Albania : A meeting with President Ahmed Zogu -- Arrival in Albania -- Tirana, the capital city -- The Albanian Army -- Western visitors in Barbaria -- Article about Albania (written on a hot day) -- VI. Hotels : Arrrival in the hotel -- The chief receptionist -- The old waiter -- The cook in his kitchen -- "Madame Annette" -- The patron -- Leaving the hotel -- The hotel -- VII. Pleasures and pains : Spring -- People in glass cages -- People on Sunday -- The office -- The destruction of a café -- Music in the Volksgarten -- The strange city -- Travel -- Tha "romance" of travel -- The lady in the compartment -- Morning at the junction -- VIII. Ending : The old poet dies -- The Third Reich, a dependency of hell on Earth -- Far from the native turf -- Grillparzer : a portrait -- The bitter bread -- Furlough in Jablonovka -- Coda : cradle.