'Keen-eyed and inquisitive...[Roth's] reports from Weimar-era Berlin capture in diamond-glitter prose the booming, brash capital' - Independent
'A supreme observer, a cynical romantic with a flair for prophecy and an understanding of the slow fester of moral outrage... Outstanding' - Irish Times
In 1920, Joseph Roth, one of the most renowned correspondents of his age, arrived in Berlin, the capital of the Weimar Republic. Writing against the city's veneer of prosperity, he chronicled the lives of its forgotten inhanbitants: the Jewish immigrants, the criminals, the bathhouse denizens and the nameless dead who filled the morgues. Both comopassionate and incisive, Roth's impressionistic writings capture the moral bankruptcy and debauched beauty of the Jazz Age, and the rising threat of fascism; together, they form an unforgettable portrait of a city in flux.
"Thrilling... [Roth's] slivers of Berlin life during the Weimar Republic catch a city juddering with a sense of its own modernity, even as he listens for sighs escaping through the cracks' - Observer
'It is the eye for the telling detail that ends up astonishing us the most... a splendid and necessary book.' - Guardian
