Weights and Measures (Peter Owen Modern Classic) - Softcover

Roth, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0720611369 ISBN 13: 9780720611366

Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers, 2002

Synopsis

A fable about the disintegration of a good man.

 

At the insistence of his wife, Eibenschutz leaves his job as an artilleryman in the Austro-Hungarian army for a civilian job as the inspector of weights and measures in a remote territory, near the Russian border. Attempting to exercise some proper rectitude in his trade duties, he is at a loss in a world of smugglers, profiteers, and small crooks. Eibenschutz soon finds he can no longer distinguish law from justice. When he discovers that his wife is pregnant by his own clerk, he spends more time away from home. Spending his hours at the border tavern, he finds himself hopelessly drawn to a beautiful gypsy woman, Euphemia. But she is prepared to share the bed of the landlord and Eibenschutz's enemy, Jadlowker, an unprincipled profiteer who has made the tavern a beacon for local smuggling activity.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph Roth is the author of The Legend of the Holy Drinker, The Radetzky March, The Silent Prophet, and String of Pearls.

Reviews

Published in Amsterdam in 1934 and translated into English in 1982, this book offers the perils of Eibensch tz, who, on the urging of his wife, takes a job as a weights and measures inspector. He soon learns that his wife is cheating on him, he has no hope of being effective in his post owing to criminal activity, and the woman to whom his own affections have strayed is sleeping with the area's leading smuggler.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0720611369
• ISBN 13: 9780720611366
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160