How Joseph Roth Saw Europe's Future

Paul Scraton, New Statesman
In a summer day in 1921, a year after he moved to Berlin, the writer Joseph Roth went to the barbershop. Inside the air was hot and heavy, soundtracked by the clack of scissors and a fly that buzzed lazily around the room. The atmosphere was stilled, deadened by the July temperatures. We know how it was in the barbershop that morning because Roth wrote about it, in one of the many feuilleton articles that were published in newspapers such as the Berliner Brsen-Courier and which helped make his reputation. He wrote literary journalism; sketches, observations and reflections that combined the...