The Tale of the 1002nd Night - Hardcover

Roth, Joseph; Hofmann, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312193416 ISBN 13: 9780312193416

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1998

Synopsis

In the first English version of Roth's final novel, a young woman, abandoned by her lover in late nineteenth-century Vienna, is forced into a bordello, where she catches the eye of a Persian shah whose gift, a magnificent string of pearls, has an unexpected impact on her life. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph Roth was born in Galicia in 1894 and became a journalist who worked in Vienna and Berlin until Hitler's rise to power. In 1933 he emigrated to Paris, where he found himself at the center of an intellectual community of exiles. An earlier version of this book was first published in 1937 in Poland, since Roth was no longer able to secure a German publisher. This edition was followed in 1939 with a German-language publication by De Gemeenschap, a Dutch publisher whose copies were confiscated by the Nazis the following year. The author of such classics as The Radetzky March and The Emperor's Tomb, Roth died in Paris in 1939.

Michael Hofmann is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost translators of works from German to English, and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review as well as the author of three volumes of poetry.

Reviews

A master fabulist and linguistic architect, Roth (1884-1939) examines the cultural crucible of fin de si?cle Vienna through the eyes of his protagonist, the Persian monarch Shah-in-Shah. Seen this way, Roth's Vienna is, as the novelist Hermann Kesten put it, "an exotic old-Austria, a kind of vanished, fairy-tale Wild East." Things do get wild when the Shah, whose harem back at home is 365 wives strong, decides to sample "the amorous arts of the Occident." His unwitting encounter with a Viennese prostitute sets in motion the novel's Byzantine plot contortions and introduces a cast of eclectic characters. Roth's (The Emperor's Tomb; The Leviathan) antic playfulness is, however, tempered by a serious consideration of the customs of the times. The Shah's visit upsets Viennese society at every level as it destabilizes social hierarchies and calls character into question. Roth decorates his well-wrought plot with lush description as he waxes philosophical on destiny and responsibility. Originally published in 1939 by the Dutch firm of De Gemeenschap, this historical novel proves its staying power, despite the tests of time and translation. Agent, Jennifer Lyons at Joan Daves Agency.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Thirteenth novel, and the last published (in 1939), by the Austrian author (18841939) whose richly textured fiction has earned him comparisons with Kafka, Musil, and Mann. As in Roth's other work (including, notably, The Radetzky March and Job), the corruption and fragility of the Habsburg Empire symbolize the crisis of an arrogant old order powerless to resist encroaching modernity. But there's a twist to this Tale: a state visit to Vienna in the latter 19th century (a visit that frames the story) by the Shah of Persia, who is himself seduced by the pleasures of that cosmopolitan city, and whose own willful wealth and power (embodied by a priceless string of pearls) destroy their would-be beneficiaries. Roth's plot focuses on the cavalry officer (Baron Taittinger) enlisted to satisfy the Shah's voluptuary whims, and on the luckless woman (Mitzi Schnagel) who was the Baron's mistress, who has borne his illegitimate son, and who is drawn into an elaborate ruse that imperils them both as well as others who unwisely stray into their orbits. Roth ranges with imperturbable skill among the viewpoints of several more major characters, including the Shah's wily ``Chief Eunuch,'' Patominos; the greedy procuress Josephine Matzner (an unforgettable study of a lone woman terrified by the specter of poverty); and the venomous ``crime reporter'' Lazik, whose scheming hastens the sequence of misadventures that bring down the complacent Taittinger. Its a scathing cautionary tale that demonstrates with masterly economy its characters' desperation to retain whatever wealth, status, and security they've managed to acquireand the ruin to which their hungers drive them. Baron Taittinger is a tremendous figure: a self-justifying sensualist and weakling whose precipitous decline oddly recalls that of Hurstwood in Dreiser's Sister Carrie. One of the best novels of one of 20th-century Europe's greatest writers. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Roth's (Right and Left & the Legend of the Holy Drinker, LJ 4/15/92) novels are held in high esteem by nearly all who have read him, so it is a great treat to have his last novel available in English for the first time. An Austrian Jew, he began life as a Socialist and ended as a monarchist, and his later works were a unique mixture of critical irony and sweet nostalgia for the lost world of the Hapsburg Empire. This work, typical of Roth's outlook on life, describes the heavy burden of unexpected good fortune that befalls a sweet young Viennese prostitute in the aftermath of a visit to Vienna by the young and amorous Shah of Persia in the late 19th century. At the center of it all is Baron Taittinger, one of Roth's characteristic representatives of the Austrian upper class, who watches with profound incomprehension as his world crumbles around him. Witty, sad, and highly recommended.AMichael T. O'Pecko, Towson State Univ., MD
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312193416
• ISBN 13: 9780312193416
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 265