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Report from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France, 1925-1939
Follows the eminent European newspaper correspondent's near-prophetic perceptions of a European order that would enable a transcendental world of beauty and promise. 12,000 first printing.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2003
About the author
Joseph Roth
519 books795 followersJoseph Roth, journalist and novelist, was born and grew up in Brody, a small town near Lemberg in East Galicia, part of the easternmost reaches of what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire and is now Ukraine. Roth was born into a Jewish family. He died in Paris after living there in exile.
http://www.josephroth.de/
http://www.josephroth.de/
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 21, 2018
As with Roth's book on Berlin, this book is a collection of vignettes, little essays on Roth's thoughts and feelings about his time in France, which were the years in the 1920s and 1930s up to his death in May 1939.
The first several chapters, Roth is once again describing the landscape of different Parisian neighborhoods, small French towns, the people he encounters and their customs. It is like he is trying to take snapshots of each place and person, to record the pleasure of remembering. Some people will like this approach, others will consider it a little sentimental. But in the context of what was transpiring in Europe in the decade that led up to the Second World War, we realize that Roth is clinging to an era that he knows is about to disappear for good.
In his final chapters he deals more with the looming Nazi threat. An essay he wrote on Jewish children refugees was particularly illuminating and the determined ignorance of people in France and England as to what sort of person Hitler and his henchmen really were.
He also writes about writers from the early part of the century who were already setting the stage with their anti-Semitic writing. There's an interesting study done by an author who I can't remember that asserted that Hitler did not start anti-semitism. He fanned a flame that had already been ignited because he knew it would make him popular. He told the masses what they wanted to hear.
These final chapters alone are worth the price of the book.
The first several chapters, Roth is once again describing the landscape of different Parisian neighborhoods, small French towns, the people he encounters and their customs. It is like he is trying to take snapshots of each place and person, to record the pleasure of remembering. Some people will like this approach, others will consider it a little sentimental. But in the context of what was transpiring in Europe in the decade that led up to the Second World War, we realize that Roth is clinging to an era that he knows is about to disappear for good.
In his final chapters he deals more with the looming Nazi threat. An essay he wrote on Jewish children refugees was particularly illuminating and the determined ignorance of people in France and England as to what sort of person Hitler and his henchmen really were.
He also writes about writers from the early part of the century who were already setting the stage with their anti-Semitic writing. There's an interesting study done by an author who I can't remember that asserted that Hitler did not start anti-semitism. He fanned a flame that had already been ignited because he knew it would make him popular. He told the masses what they wanted to hear.
These final chapters alone are worth the price of the book.
April 7, 2024
The description of this book implies that Roth, a German writer and reporter, is writing extensively about Paris and the coming catastrophe in Europe in the run-up to WWII. These essays are written between 1925 and 1939.
Imagine my surprise then when we hear little of Paris until half way through the book and little about the Nazis and what's going on in Germany until maybe the last 20%. Much of the writing includes his travels to the outer regions of France such as Nimes, Arles, Vienne, Marseille and Deauville with random book reviews and societal critiques sprinkled in the mix. So he may go and spend 13 days in Arles and write a 3 page essay that is filed with a German newspaper. Another several days in Vienne and then a piece about how nothing happens there. At least one cannot accuse him of not attempting to understand the places he writes about.
Although there are some classic pieces (a real take-down of bullfighting, a humorous satiric piece on the wealthy beach goers in Deauville and an exhortation to the French public to stop sending their children to Germany to learn German, but instead to Austria where they will not be Nazified), there wasn't enough here to keep me fully interested and I admit to skimming a fair amount.
Imagine my surprise then when we hear little of Paris until half way through the book and little about the Nazis and what's going on in Germany until maybe the last 20%. Much of the writing includes his travels to the outer regions of France such as Nimes, Arles, Vienne, Marseille and Deauville with random book reviews and societal critiques sprinkled in the mix. So he may go and spend 13 days in Arles and write a 3 page essay that is filed with a German newspaper. Another several days in Vienne and then a piece about how nothing happens there. At least one cannot accuse him of not attempting to understand the places he writes about.
Although there are some classic pieces (a real take-down of bullfighting, a humorous satiric piece on the wealthy beach goers in Deauville and an exhortation to the French public to stop sending their children to Germany to learn German, but instead to Austria where they will not be Nazified), there wasn't enough here to keep me fully interested and I admit to skimming a fair amount.
January 3, 2012
This was a follow-on from Joseph Roth's book, "What I Saw," his observations from Berlin from 1920-23. He left Germany because of the things he saw going on there, and moved to France, which he found to be a free and enlightened paradise in comparison. It's a total pleasure to read his delightful observations about France, where he enjoyed a quality of life that was disappearing in Germany. In his writing, he moves from city to city and describes each of them and his joy in being there. But he can't help but observe from a distance the Nazi ascendancy in Germany, and over time his writing reflects his sadness and outrage about what is happening in his homeland. It seems fortunate in a way that he died in 1939, a year before the occupation of France. All in all, a moving and personal record of the times.
September 1, 2018
(FROM MY BLOG) A young Austrian-Jewish journalist's move from Vienna to Berlin in 1920 might seem, in retrospect, a poor career move. But Joseph Roth -- born in what is now Ukraine but was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire -- wrote for a Vienna newspaper, and a move to the capital of the German-speaking world would then have been the equivalent of moving to New York for a young American writer. Five years later, he moved to Paris as a correspondent for the prominent German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung.
Unexpectedly, apparently, Roth experienced a sense of exhilarated relief upon arrival in France. Paris (and France) was everything that Germany was not -- "free, open, intellectual in the best sense, and ironic in its magnificent pathos," as he wrote to his editor in 1925. He apparently did not sense the undercurrents of French anti-Semitism that had been made obvious during the Dreyfus Affair, and were to prove still lingering during the days of the Vichy Republic.
Report from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France 1925-1939 is a mixed collection of Roth's short essays and letters. The section of the book entitled "In the French Midi" contains feature articles written for his Frankfurt newspaper discussing in lyrical detail the cities and their inhabitants visited while traveling through the south of France, from Lyon to the Riviera. These short articles were expanded in an even more "literary" style and language in a series of essays entitled "The White Cities," never published before Roth's death in 1939. The expanded essays made even clearer Roth's disaffection with Germany and the trends he saw developing there. The last half of the book contains newspaper articles, written both for Frankfurter Zeitung (the last dated 1932), and increasingly for German language papers in Paris, the Netherlands and Prague.
The arc of his writing from 1925 to 1939 shows the progress of his thought from an excitement about the grace and beauty of France as contrasted with the dullness and sullenness of Germany-- a contrast with his adopted home shared, of course, by American expatriates in Paris escaping their own homeland -- to an increasing alarm about developments in German life and politics even before Hitler assumed power, to his eventual realization that as a Jew and a liberal, he no longer could return to Germany. It becomes clear to him that Germany was destroying -- deliberately and methodically -- a pan-European culture that had been developing across the continent.
I won't bore you with obvious analogies to the world today.
The book is fascinating today, of course, first because he wrote from an unusual perspective about developments between the two world wars -- not so much about political events, because he wasn't a political journalist, but about cultural trends and differences among nations and between eras. But it is also worth reading because of his lyrical descriptions -- ably translated to English -- of art, architecture, street scenes, and the people he observed about him from all strata of French life.
Also interesting -- and to me unexpected -- was Roth's nostalgia for the Austro-Hungarian empire -- an empire of German culture and refinement, as he viewed it, comparable in some ways to his beloved France. He hates that "German" had come to mean, in the world's eyes, "Prussian." He notes that the Austrians were speaking a refined German back when the Prussians were still speaking their own Slavic language along the shores of the Baltic Sea. Although proudly a Jew, he displays an enthusiasm for Catholicism -- not only as an offshoot of Judaism, but as a promoter of the cosmopolitan, pan-European civilization, and an antidote to a narrow and violent nationalism, that he longs for.
Roth died in Paris, probably from complications of alcoholism, in 1939. He was spared the spectacle of yet another war between France and Germany.
Roth is best known today for novels and short stories, written in his final years, that evoked the Austro-Hungarian era. His best known novel is Radetzky March (1932), described as an epic following three generations of a family during the rise and fall of the Empire. Not only have I read none of his fiction, I confess I'd never heard of Roth himself until this past week. I'm tempted to read further.
Unexpectedly, apparently, Roth experienced a sense of exhilarated relief upon arrival in France. Paris (and France) was everything that Germany was not -- "free, open, intellectual in the best sense, and ironic in its magnificent pathos," as he wrote to his editor in 1925. He apparently did not sense the undercurrents of French anti-Semitism that had been made obvious during the Dreyfus Affair, and were to prove still lingering during the days of the Vichy Republic.
Report from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France 1925-1939 is a mixed collection of Roth's short essays and letters. The section of the book entitled "In the French Midi" contains feature articles written for his Frankfurt newspaper discussing in lyrical detail the cities and their inhabitants visited while traveling through the south of France, from Lyon to the Riviera. These short articles were expanded in an even more "literary" style and language in a series of essays entitled "The White Cities," never published before Roth's death in 1939. The expanded essays made even clearer Roth's disaffection with Germany and the trends he saw developing there. The last half of the book contains newspaper articles, written both for Frankfurter Zeitung (the last dated 1932), and increasingly for German language papers in Paris, the Netherlands and Prague.
The arc of his writing from 1925 to 1939 shows the progress of his thought from an excitement about the grace and beauty of France as contrasted with the dullness and sullenness of Germany-- a contrast with his adopted home shared, of course, by American expatriates in Paris escaping their own homeland -- to an increasing alarm about developments in German life and politics even before Hitler assumed power, to his eventual realization that as a Jew and a liberal, he no longer could return to Germany. It becomes clear to him that Germany was destroying -- deliberately and methodically -- a pan-European culture that had been developing across the continent.
I won't bore you with obvious analogies to the world today.
The book is fascinating today, of course, first because he wrote from an unusual perspective about developments between the two world wars -- not so much about political events, because he wasn't a political journalist, but about cultural trends and differences among nations and between eras. But it is also worth reading because of his lyrical descriptions -- ably translated to English -- of art, architecture, street scenes, and the people he observed about him from all strata of French life.
No one who hasn't been here can claim to be more than half human or any sort of European. It is free, open, intellectual in the best sense, and ironic in its magnificent pathos. Every cab driver here is wittier than any one of our authors. We really are a miserable lot. Here everyone smiles at me …. I feel at ease with everyone, even though we continually misunderstand each other when we talk about practical things, just because we understand each other so perfectly on every subtlety and nuance. … The cattlemen with whom I eat breakfast are more aristocratic and refined than our cabinet ministers; patriotism is justified here, nationalism is a demonstration of a European conscience, every affiche is a poem, court announcements are as elegant as our best prose, cinema billboards display more imagination and psychological insight than do our contemporary novels, the soldiers are like whimsical children, the policemen witty editorial writers.The fact that there was a German audience back home for such critical commentary reminds us that not all of post-war Germany awaited hyper-nationalistic fascism with enthusiasm.
Also interesting -- and to me unexpected -- was Roth's nostalgia for the Austro-Hungarian empire -- an empire of German culture and refinement, as he viewed it, comparable in some ways to his beloved France. He hates that "German" had come to mean, in the world's eyes, "Prussian." He notes that the Austrians were speaking a refined German back when the Prussians were still speaking their own Slavic language along the shores of the Baltic Sea. Although proudly a Jew, he displays an enthusiasm for Catholicism -- not only as an offshoot of Judaism, but as a promoter of the cosmopolitan, pan-European civilization, and an antidote to a narrow and violent nationalism, that he longs for.
Roth died in Paris, probably from complications of alcoholism, in 1939. He was spared the spectacle of yet another war between France and Germany.
Roth is best known today for novels and short stories, written in his final years, that evoked the Austro-Hungarian era. His best known novel is Radetzky March (1932), described as an epic following three generations of a family during the rise and fall of the Empire. Not only have I read none of his fiction, I confess I'd never heard of Roth himself until this past week. I'm tempted to read further.
January 10, 2018
Joseph Roth was working in Paris as a journalist in 1938 at the time of Kristallnacht when many of his fellow Jews in Austria and Germany were plundered and murdered. The following extended quote is from "In the Bistro After Midnight", a piece he published at the time. In a way it encapsulates the situation he spent his brief career (1923 - 1939) chronicling as well as giving a glimpse of his style.
“The driver comes to our bistro every night. … All his life he had been a coachman. But then, when the human age for horses, the era when the equine race was involved with the human race, came to an end, he had become a driver. It's a miracle that he still is. Because just as he might once have been in the habit of allowing his horses to drink at every fountain, so he himself now, possibly in melancholy tribute to those long-since-slaughtered beasts, was in the habit of taking a drink in all the bistros and bars he happened to pass on his journeys. It was a miracle that he had been able to join us so late at night. But it was a regular, almost a nightly, miracle. As usual he spoke up at once and what he said was this:
'Don't you go losing yourselves in these trivialities! Don't talk to me about politics. I know why the world is coming to grief, because I used to be a coachman. It's conscience – gentlemen – conscience has been eradicated. It's been replaced by authorization. It used to be that every man had his own conscience. And he behaved accordingly. Even my horses had a conscience. Nowadays, here's an example from my working life: You're perfectly entitled to run someone over, so long as he's not on a pedestrian crossing. When a customs officer on the border drags a blind or handicapped passenger out of his compartment and subjects him to a search, there's not a trace of conscience in the customs officer. He's not just got his authorization, he has his empowerment. And yet the customers officer's only human. The minister is authorized to negotiate on behalf of his people. His authorization kills off his conscience. As for dictators, the only mystery there is that they've given themselves their own authorization. They don't just want to silence conscience, they want to kill it off. And so they have! The governments in democracies only want to silence it. And they've done that too! With authorization to follow. Horses are what I know gentlemen! Every horse would hesitate when someone ran across the road in front of it. My taxi doesn't hesitate. My horses had conscience. My car has authorization. That's where I see the distinction. In my day, when I was still a coachmen, even a diplomat used to have a conscience. Today, now that I'm a driver, even a member of parliament only has powers.
'No more conscience in the world! No more horses!'
And so he ended his speech and everyone laughed.”
“The driver comes to our bistro every night. … All his life he had been a coachman. But then, when the human age for horses, the era when the equine race was involved with the human race, came to an end, he had become a driver. It's a miracle that he still is. Because just as he might once have been in the habit of allowing his horses to drink at every fountain, so he himself now, possibly in melancholy tribute to those long-since-slaughtered beasts, was in the habit of taking a drink in all the bistros and bars he happened to pass on his journeys. It was a miracle that he had been able to join us so late at night. But it was a regular, almost a nightly, miracle. As usual he spoke up at once and what he said was this:
'Don't you go losing yourselves in these trivialities! Don't talk to me about politics. I know why the world is coming to grief, because I used to be a coachman. It's conscience – gentlemen – conscience has been eradicated. It's been replaced by authorization. It used to be that every man had his own conscience. And he behaved accordingly. Even my horses had a conscience. Nowadays, here's an example from my working life: You're perfectly entitled to run someone over, so long as he's not on a pedestrian crossing. When a customs officer on the border drags a blind or handicapped passenger out of his compartment and subjects him to a search, there's not a trace of conscience in the customs officer. He's not just got his authorization, he has his empowerment. And yet the customers officer's only human. The minister is authorized to negotiate on behalf of his people. His authorization kills off his conscience. As for dictators, the only mystery there is that they've given themselves their own authorization. They don't just want to silence conscience, they want to kill it off. And so they have! The governments in democracies only want to silence it. And they've done that too! With authorization to follow. Horses are what I know gentlemen! Every horse would hesitate when someone ran across the road in front of it. My taxi doesn't hesitate. My horses had conscience. My car has authorization. That's where I see the distinction. In my day, when I was still a coachmen, even a diplomat used to have a conscience. Today, now that I'm a driver, even a member of parliament only has powers.
'No more conscience in the world! No more horses!'
And so he ended his speech and everyone laughed.”
July 22, 2017
Some of the most quotable, imaginative and insightful reading I have had the pleasure of savoring in a long time. Joseph Roth’s Report from a Parisian Paradise is my 2nd read into this man’s shelf. I liked his most famous novel The Radetzky March (Works of Joseph Roth) but what I like most was rarely plotting or dialog. It was his descriptive passages. Parisian Paradise is all of the best of what Roth can do and less of the parts he handles less well. Joseph Roth can be melancholy and dedicated to the past, but his word are beautify selected and joined to carry the reader to wonderful paces in the mind. Highly recommended. Nothing in the way of sex, violence or bad language. Every essay is a model for anyone of any age; wanting to write better.
Joseph Roth was not known to be a happy writer and even here he can turn from glowing to shades of depression in a few words. A sentence can start in sunshine and end in shadow.
On almost every page I found paragraphs and ideas I wanted to copy out and share with friends. His thoughts about small ancient French cities; their roles in history as stopping places for ancient Romans or seaport towns of highly mixed populations and the contrasts between cathedrals, castles and pagan amphitheaters invite us to re think how places can be or reject their history. One wonders how many of these places survived the War that was about to happen. Of those that did, the reader has kindled an urge to visit. An urge is tempered by the certainty that growing populations and the pressure to modernize may have ended the quaint and individual characteristics Roth makes so clear and so desirable. And so we feel nostalgia for places that have lost the charms, much as Roth felt nostalgia for his lost youth.
Roughly the last third of Parisian Paradise are essays about the growing threat of Nazi power. As early as 1925 and with total certain fear by 1933, Joseph Roth is calling for the world to isolate and confront Germany. Roth was a patriotic Austrian, and seems fearless in his willingness to call Europe to end the Nazis. Granted he was writing from the relative safety of France, but he was writing in German, for publication in Germany. May like him would be silenced, violently by German secret operatives. Instead, Roth died in 1939 of drink.
Joseph Roth was not known to be a happy writer and even here he can turn from glowing to shades of depression in a few words. A sentence can start in sunshine and end in shadow.
On almost every page I found paragraphs and ideas I wanted to copy out and share with friends. His thoughts about small ancient French cities; their roles in history as stopping places for ancient Romans or seaport towns of highly mixed populations and the contrasts between cathedrals, castles and pagan amphitheaters invite us to re think how places can be or reject their history. One wonders how many of these places survived the War that was about to happen. Of those that did, the reader has kindled an urge to visit. An urge is tempered by the certainty that growing populations and the pressure to modernize may have ended the quaint and individual characteristics Roth makes so clear and so desirable. And so we feel nostalgia for places that have lost the charms, much as Roth felt nostalgia for his lost youth.
Roughly the last third of Parisian Paradise are essays about the growing threat of Nazi power. As early as 1925 and with total certain fear by 1933, Joseph Roth is calling for the world to isolate and confront Germany. Roth was a patriotic Austrian, and seems fearless in his willingness to call Europe to end the Nazis. Granted he was writing from the relative safety of France, but he was writing in German, for publication in Germany. May like him would be silenced, violently by German secret operatives. Instead, Roth died in 1939 of drink.
August 3, 2021
A wonderful collection of essays that exhibits Roth's observational powers at their apogee, this time in evocation of the timeless wonders of southern France and Paris, along with several poignant, heartbreaking, and prescient reflections on the threat of fascism, far before most had appreciated its dangers.
January 17, 2019
Roth's non-fiction is occasionally perfect. There's certainly some filler here (hence only 4 stars), but it's good. It's very good. If you're going to read Joseph Roth, read The Hotel Years, read his novel The Radetzky March (one is obliged), and read this.
May 23, 2019
As a great fan of Joseph Roth's writing I really enjoyed the essays, quite a few of which I struggled to comprehend fully---however for me a good read!!
September 6, 2019
While not agreeing with all of Joseph Roth’s stated opinions I enjoyed his manner of writing and evoking of southwestern France.
October 19, 2019
Just 50 pages in, I give this book five stars. It's Joseph Roth. You must read his work.
April 12, 2019
"Where Berlin represents power, rigidity, scale, and threat, France is suppleness, beauty, humanity, and promise. If Berlin was Joseph Roth's frigid inferno, Paris was his paradise." (11)
"In this oldest part of town, there is no inert historicising. The old things are on the beaten track. The new life doesn't bloom from the ruins. The ruins bloom into new life. In a museum they might have been cultural bric-a-brac. But here every passerby sees every stone afresh, and everyone has the sensation of being the very first person to see it." (36-7)
"At night, little lights are on in all the rooms, only one yellow light in each room, not to create light but to draw the shadows out fo the furniture." (43)
"[T]he world isn't so terribly literal. We are, however, because we confuse names and things." (73)
"But people aren't pigments, nor is the world a palette! The more mixing, the more characteristics! I won't live to see the beautiful world in which every individual can represent himself in the totality, but even today I can sense such a future, as I sit in the 'Place de l'Horloge' in Avignon, and see all the races in the world shine in the features of a policeman, a beggar, a waiter. That for me is the highest stage of human evolution. And human evolution is what Provencal culture is all about, as witness the great poet Mistral, to some scholarly question regarding the races that dwelled in that part of the country, replying with bewilderment or asperity: 'Races? But there is only one sun!'" (109)
"There are no more orrifying monuments than these trees -- these black, riven stumps, scorched at the top, with their roots still in the ground but now devoid of function, rotting and splintering, each one a devastated world, each stump a kind of inverse tree, each tree its own gallows tree, riddled or studded with bullets, each one with rags of bark hanging off of it, home for insects and lead, still smelling of fire and gas. These stumps are the particular crop that has taken here." (186-7)
"The Germans have always had the gift of killing to music." (236)
"In this oldest part of town, there is no inert historicising. The old things are on the beaten track. The new life doesn't bloom from the ruins. The ruins bloom into new life. In a museum they might have been cultural bric-a-brac. But here every passerby sees every stone afresh, and everyone has the sensation of being the very first person to see it." (36-7)
"At night, little lights are on in all the rooms, only one yellow light in each room, not to create light but to draw the shadows out fo the furniture." (43)
"[T]he world isn't so terribly literal. We are, however, because we confuse names and things." (73)
"But people aren't pigments, nor is the world a palette! The more mixing, the more characteristics! I won't live to see the beautiful world in which every individual can represent himself in the totality, but even today I can sense such a future, as I sit in the 'Place de l'Horloge' in Avignon, and see all the races in the world shine in the features of a policeman, a beggar, a waiter. That for me is the highest stage of human evolution. And human evolution is what Provencal culture is all about, as witness the great poet Mistral, to some scholarly question regarding the races that dwelled in that part of the country, replying with bewilderment or asperity: 'Races? But there is only one sun!'" (109)
"There are no more orrifying monuments than these trees -- these black, riven stumps, scorched at the top, with their roots still in the ground but now devoid of function, rotting and splintering, each one a devastated world, each stump a kind of inverse tree, each tree its own gallows tree, riddled or studded with bullets, each one with rags of bark hanging off of it, home for insects and lead, still smelling of fire and gas. These stumps are the particular crop that has taken here." (186-7)
"The Germans have always had the gift of killing to music." (236)
June 18, 2011
The articles in this collection originally appeared in newspapers in Germany, and it's telling that they're called "essays" for the sake of this collection. German newspaper writing still tends to be more dense and erudite than American newspaper writing, but the idiosyncratic style and high-mindedness of these articles would not fly even in German papers today. As a state of the art of journalism between the world wars, then, this collection is quite interesting.
The title is somewhat of a misnomer, since the collection includes many articles Roth wrote on his travels throughout France, not just during his time in Paris. Roth's observational powers are keen, and his particular vision of France almost never matched my own, which made the book fun and engaging. This is an intriguing portrait of France at a critical moment of transition but a more intriguing portrait of an opinionated journalist at the height of his skill.
The title is somewhat of a misnomer, since the collection includes many articles Roth wrote on his travels throughout France, not just during his time in Paris. Roth's observational powers are keen, and his particular vision of France almost never matched my own, which made the book fun and engaging. This is an intriguing portrait of France at a critical moment of transition but a more intriguing portrait of an opinionated journalist at the height of his skill.
September 10, 2007
despite the awful title, this book is absolutely outstanding.
roth is an exceptional writer, able to seamlessly meld hard-hitting philosophical reflections with lyrical descriptions of day-to-day reality. these short essays are somewhere between a travel diary and a newspaper article (roth earned his living as a journalist). the essays are also extraordinary historical documents chronicling (albeit indirectly) roth's escape to france and his reflections on his native germany. i would recommend this book to anyone.
roth is an exceptional writer, able to seamlessly meld hard-hitting philosophical reflections with lyrical descriptions of day-to-day reality. these short essays are somewhere between a travel diary and a newspaper article (roth earned his living as a journalist). the essays are also extraordinary historical documents chronicling (albeit indirectly) roth's escape to france and his reflections on his native germany. i would recommend this book to anyone.
June 10, 2015
Reading a travel guide and observations of the various cities in France between 1925 - 39 was an interesting and fascinating tour. I would like a modern comparison of the cities reviewed to note how much has changed. It also provides a landscape of post World War I and pre World War II. This is helpful and especially so since the articles are written by a German in France at that time.
February 1, 2011
Interesting to see a German perspective of France at a time when Germany was gearing up to go to war with France. Also, to see his initial amazement at the freedom of France begin to be dampened by the harsh realities was informative.
August 17, 2009
The most beautiful writing about the most beautiful country of them all: France, one most essential read.
August 18, 2010
Wow - much more than a travel narrative, written by an unrepentant and civilized European who watched his world drift into the abyss.
Want to Read
October 12, 2010Recommended by a member of Journalist's Top Reads. This is one of my favorite eras in history, so I'm looking forward to this...
April 29, 2011
nobody reads this but maybe everybody should. like eatin yer spinach.
July 9, 2012
Terribly sad: the articles of a man who sees what's happening and what's coming (the rise of the Third Reich and the war) and can't tear his eyes away--also, can't get over the blindness of others.
November 2, 2016
Another superb book of writing by a 20th-century master.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews