Joseph Roth: TRAVELS TO UKRAINE AND RUSSIA (C.H.Beck)

Roth was a successful journalist in the 1920s. On behalf of the „Frankfurter Zeitung,“ he traveled to the young Soviet Union in 1926 and to Poland in 1928 – with a special focus on the situation of the Ukrainian minority there. In 2015, publisher C.H.Beck reissued some of Joseph Roth’s reportages under the title „Travels in the Ukraine and Russia“.

On his expeditions to Kiev, Moscow and Odessa, to Lviv, Baku or Astrakhan, the Galician-born writer and journalist Joseph Roth immersed himself in the multifaceted cosmos of eastern Europe. His reports and essays from the 1920s are moving testimonies of great topicality! Joseph Roth’s attention is focused on the people and their reality of life in the Soviet Union, which is characterized by a coexistence of languages, cultures and religions. Whether in the hustle and bustle of everyday life on the streets of Leningrad, at the border crossing of Niegoreloje or on board a Volga steamer, Roth’s descriptions are always captivating due to his well-founded research and his special style. In doing so, he creates tense images of social realities between the opposing poles of state and church, dictatorship and freedom of the press, poverty and wealth. At the same time, he shows how he, who has become homeless, reclaims a piece of home by traveling, writing, and critically probing.  

»A discovery.« RBB Kulturradio

»Joseph Roth’s sensitive observations from 1920s Russia and Ukraine expose a bleak social reality.« TAZ

»The whole text sounds like the publicity book of a Europe that today seems to have forgotten itself altogether.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

»The accounts are of the highest linguistic quality and provide insights into life between Poland and the Urals.« Kleine Zeitung

»As knowledgeable as it is circumspect.« Neues Deutschland

»Roth’s nearly 90-year-old accounts are instructive, entertaining – sometimes surprisingly up-to-date.« GEO

»An unconditional reading recommendation!« HR2 Kultur

»Outstanding journalistic work by an astute observer.« Badische Zeitung

»Reads like a report from the present day.« Nürnberger Nachrichten

»Not only linguistically brilliant, but above all honest.« Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Roth’s reportages of yesterday read like those of today.« Die Rheinpfalz

»Joseph Roth’s clear-eyed reports from Ukraine and Russia are still politically revealing nine years later. Traveling with Joseph Roth is an adventure of perception.« Der Standard

»Roth’s clear-sighted, subtle, clearly formulated language, which sometimes seems almost childishly simple without ever becoming banal, gives the travel observations a high poetic density.« Nürnberger Zeitung

»Brilliantly written reportage from Eastern Europe, combining astute observations with linguistic artistry and vision.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Textura means fabric, and the name couldn’t be more apt for a collection that takes care of marginal texts from Sappho, Boccaccio, Kafka, and Trakl through the modern classics to the present, each superbly annotated and exquisitely executed graphically.« 5 Plus, 01/2015

»Brilliant(…) reportage.« Neue Zürcher Zeitung