The Legend of the Holy Drinker

Roth, Joseph

ISBN 10: 0701134801 / ISBN 13: 9780701134808

Published by Chatto & Windus, London, 1989

About this Item

1989. [iv], 49pp. "Roth wrote this final novella shortly before his death in 1939. It is the story of the last weeks in the life of a Parisian alcoholic and convicted murderer. The book was been made into a film, which won the 1988 Palme D'Or at the Venice Film Festival." Jacket unclipped with just very minor shelf-wear. Gilt titles to the spine and otherwise the book in excellent condition. No inscriptions.

Seller Inventory # LitRothJ001a

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Legend of the Holy Drinker
• Publisher: Chatto & Windus, London
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0701134801
• ISBN 13: 9780701134808
• Binding: Original Black Hardback
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: Very Good Plus
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good Plus
• Seller catalogs:
  • Middle East
  • Modern Firsts
  • History

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was the great elegist of the cosmopolitan, tolerant and doomed Central European culture that flourished in the dying days of the Austrian Empire. He wrote thirteen novels, including The Radetzky March and The String of Pearts.