Roth marches on

Writing here (18 November), Anita Brookner described Joseph Roth’s reports from France 1925-39, The White Cities, as ‘her best read of the year’. I’ve had a copy for several months now, and I keep dipping into it and always finding something new, surprising and delightful. The rediscovery of Roth has been one of the happiest things in recent years; it owes much to the devotion and excellence of his translator, Michael Hofmann, and of course to the support given by his publisher, Granta.

Roth is probably best known for The Radetzky March, one of the masterpieces of 20th-century fiction. None of his other books may match that; why should they? — it’s enough to have written one such novel; but nothing he wrote is less than fresh, illuminating and original, and everything, fiction and journalism alike, is completely individual, the voice unmistakable.

The White Cities offers not only delightful pictures of France between the wars; it is also the record of the impact of the country and society on one born a subject of the Habsburg empire (to the memory of which he remained loyal), then, after 1933, a refugee from Nazi Germany.