Job: The Story of a Simple Man

Description

'Many years ago there lived in Zuchnow, in Russia, a man named Mendel Signer. He was pious, God-fearing and ordinary, an entirely commonplace Jew...' So Roth begins his novel about the loss of faith and the experience of suffering. His modern Job goes through his trials in the ghettos of Tsarist Russia and on the unforgiving streets of New York. Mendel Singer loses his family, falls terribly ill and is badly abused. He needs a miracle...

JOSEPH ROTH (1894-1939) was a prolific journalist and novelist. One of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, his work traces the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the rising fascist threat in Europe. On Hitler's assumption of power, he was obliged to leave Germany for Paris, where he died in poverty a few years later. His books include What I Saw, Job, The White Cities, The String of Pearls and The Radetzky March, all published by Granta Books. MICHAEL HOFMANN is the highly acclaimed translator of Joseph Roth, Franz Kafka, Hans Fallada, Bertolt Brecht, and many more. A poet and essayist, he also teaches at the University of Florida.

Extraordinary... A powerful work by a titan of early 20th-century literature -- Alistair Mabbott * Herald * [A] tender fable.... Dorothy Thompson's translation is enthralling -- Max Lui * Independent * One of the great European novelists of the century * Sunday Times * Roth... can pack more into a few pages than lesser writers can do in a few hundred. But his lightness of touch has a deceptive historical weight * Times Literary Supplement * Roth is one of those rare and welcome talents whose concision and deceptive simplicity send the cogs of the imagination whizzing into overdrive * Sunday Telegraph * Enthralling... Roth's most perfect book * Independent * One of the great writers of the century * The Times * 'It is not possible to do justice to Job's poetic subtlety, but I can vouch for its extraordinary merits * Thomas Mann * Roth's philosophical acuity is matched by his deep compassion for the frailty of the human condition * Sunday Times * There are some books that seem sacrosanct and one of them is Job * Independent * Roth, above all, is a consistently magnificent writer of prose * Guardian *