Joseph Roth
Author: BBC
June 4, 2026
Duration: 59:40
Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the great writers on Central Europe after the first world war and on the dying of the old orders with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. As a German speaking Jew from Brody in the north-eastern edge of that Empire, which was then in Galicia, next in Poland and is now in Ukraine, Roth (1894 - 1939) was to spend his short life moving first to Lviv then to Vienna and finally to Paris via Berlin without ever finding a settled home. Roth explored the loss of homeland and anticipated the dangers of the new nationalism through his journalism and in his novels including Radetzky March, Job, Rebellion and Flight Without End, and his books were among the first the Nazis burned.
With
Helen Chambers
Emeritus Professor of German at the University of St Andrews
Deborah Holmes
Associate Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Salzburg
And
Jon Hughes
Reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Jon Hughes, Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth's Writing in the 1920s (MHRA, 2006)
Heinz Lunzer and Victoria Lunzer-Talos, Joseph Roth: Leben und Werk in Bildern (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1994)
Keiron Pim, Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth (Granta, 2022)
Joseph Roth (trans. Deborah Holmes, ed. Helen Constantine), Vienna Tales (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Joseph Roth (trans. and ed. Michael Hofmann), A Life in Letters (Granta, 2012)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Collected Shorter Fiction (Granta, 2001)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Rebellion (Granta, 2000)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Radetzky March (Granta, 2022)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Granta, 2022)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Wandering Jews (Granta, 2001)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933 (Granta, 2022)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars (Granta, 2015)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Reports from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France 1925-1939 (Granta, 2004)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Emperor’s Tomb (Granta, 2013)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The String of Pearls (Granta, 1999)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The White Cities: Reports From France 1925-1939 (Granta, 2013)
Joseph Roth (trans. David Le Vay), Weights and Measures (Pushkin Press, 2024)
Joseph Roth (trans. Daved Le Vay and Beatrice Musgrave), Flight Without End (Pushkin Press, 2024)
Joseph Roth (trans. Ruth Martin), The Coral Merchant: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press, 2020)
Joseph Roth (trans Will Stone), On the End of the World (Pushkin Press, 2019)
Joseph Roth (trans. Dorothy Thompson), Job: The Story of a Simple Man (Granta, 2022)
Wilhelm Von Sternburg, Joseph Roth: Eine Biographie (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production
Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.
