Code: 55040 A

“Rebellion” by Joseph Roth at Iranian bookstores

“Rebellion” by Joseph Roth at Iranian bookstores

TEHRAN –(Iranart)- A Persian translation of Joseph Roth’s “Rebellion” has recently been published by Mahi Publications in Tehran.

The book has been rendered into Persian by Ali Asadian.

From Roth, an allegorical yet decidedly modern novelist, comes to this story of postwar disillusion, the limits of faith and personal fate as governed by the blind, casual workings of a machine controlled by no one and for which no one is responsible.

When Andreas Pum returns from World War I, he has lost a leg but gained a medal. But unlike his fellow sufferers, Pum maintains his unswerving faith in God, Government and Authority. Ironically, after a dispute, Pum is imprisoned as a rebel, and all that he believed in is now thrown into upheaval. Moving along at a breakneck clip, “Rebellion” captures the cynicism and upheavals of a postwar society. Its jazz-like cadences mix with social commentary to create a wise parable about justice and society.

Roth, author of “Hotel Savoy” and “The Radetzky March”, is perhaps the least known of the important writers of this century.

Roth is a journalist and regional novelist who, particularly in his later novels, mourned the passing of an age of stability he saw represented by the last pre-World War I years of the Habsburg empire of Austria-Hungary.

Details about Roth’s early years, religious beliefs, and personal life are little known; Roth himself made a practice of concealing or transforming such biographical information. It is known that he studied at Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine) and Vienna, and then served in the Austrian army from 1916 to 1918. 

After the war, he worked as a journalist in Vienna and Berlin and was a regular contributor to the Frankfurter Zeitung. During this period he wrote several novels, including “Radetzky March” (Radetzkymarsch), considered his best novel, an excellent portrait of the latter days of the monarchy. 

Roth was concerned with the dilemma of individual moral heroes in a time of decadence and moribund traditions. A number of his plots treat the difficulties of the father-son relationship; the aged emperor Francis Joseph appears repeatedly as a paternal figure. 

In 1933 Roth immigrated to Paris, where he spent the remainder of his life. In his final years, he viewed the past with increasing nostalgia, a sentiment evident in the six novels that were written during this exile period. “The Capuchin Tomb” is an example. 

source: Tehran Times

Rebellion Joseph Roth
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