TARABAS - A GUEST ON EARTH [First UK paperback edition]

First impression of the first UK paperback edition, published in Picador's Picador Classics series in 1988 - with the complete number string: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 on the printer's page, and with a portrait photograph of the author opposite the title page. Translated from the German by Winifred Katzin. The book was first published in the UK in hardcover, in a different translation, by William Heinemann in 1935, and reissued in 1987 with the new translation as used for this Picador edition. The book was originally published in German by Querido Verlag, Amsterdam as "Tarabas. Ein Gast auf dieser Erde'. ***Near fine in glossy card illustrated covers, with the original publisher's printed price of £4.95 net on the back cover. The covers are just slightly rubbed and creased at the edges, commensurate with age and handling. Spine tight without any reading creases. Internally also near fine with no inscriptions. Pages clean with no annotations or foxing. The paper stock and the inside of the covers have tanned with age. No creases or tears. ***225 pages plus five printed pages of publisher's adverts at the back of the book. 198mm x 130mm. ***'Like "Confessions of a Murderer", "Tarabas - A Guest on Earth" dates from Roth's last years of exile and decline in Paris. The strange tale of Nicholas Tarabas, youthful revolutionist turned soldier of brutal bearing turned vagabond on the road to redemption, is a parable of the humbling of the great and the sudden bestowal of grace, set on the endless plains of the Russian-Polish borders in the years following the First World War. Quintessential Roth, "Tarabas" is as bitterly evocative of a vanished Europe as are the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. [Quote taken from the back cover] *** Joseph Roth (1894-1939), was an Austrian writer and journalist. He was forced out of his country because of the rise of Nazism. ***The novel (Tarabas: A Guest on Earth, in English) is a fable set early in the Russian Revolution. "Tarabas" is the story of a Russian peasant who, in his youth, is told by a gypsy that it is his destiny to be both a murderer and saint. "Tarabas", a later novel, was written when Roth was living in exile in Paris. Five years later, an alcoholic, he died in a Paris hospital. [Wiki] ***First impression of the uncommon first UK paperback edition of Roth's third book to originally appear in English, after "Job" and "The Radetzky March". Of interest to collectors of the work of Joseph Roth. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc.…