A powerful collection written on the eve of the destruction of Europe
by the Second World War, by the great Joseph Roth
Having fled to Paris in January 1933, on the very day Hitler seized
power in Germany, Joseph Roth wrote a series of articles in that 'hour
before the end of the world', that he foresaw was coming and which would
see the full horror of Hitler's barbarism, the Second World War and most
crucially for Roth, the final irreversible destruction of a pan European
consciousness.
Incisive and ironic, the writing evokes Roth's bitterness, frustration
and morbid despair at the coming annihilation of the free world while
displaying his great nostalgia for the Hapsburg Empire into which he was
born and his ingrained fear of nationalism in any form.