Job

Description

One man's faith is tested, lost and restored in this gem of a novel by 20th century Jewish Austrian writer Joseph Roth. Mendel Singer, a Jewish-Orthodox schoolteacher, lives in early 20th century Galicia. A modern-day Job, he is subjected to one misfortune after another. As a result of these terrible trials, Mendel Singer's worldview shatters, along with his belief in God's benign omnipotence. Only a miracle can now restore his faith.

Author description

Joseph Roth: Joseph Roth 1894-1937 was an Austrian novelist, best known for his family saga "Radetzky March" (1932), and for his novel of Jewish life, "Job" (1930). From 1930, Roth's fiction became less concerned with contemporary society, with which he had become increasingly disillusioned, and during this period his work frequently evoked a melancholic nostalgia for life in imperial Central Europe prior to 1914. He often portrayed the fate of homeless wanderers looking for a place to live, in particular Jews and former citizens of the old Austria-Hungary, who, with the downfall of the monarchy, had lost their homeland.
Ross Benjamin is a writer and translator living in Nyack, New York. His work has appeared in Bookforum, The Nation, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, and other publications. His translations include Friedrich Holderlin's Hyperion, Kevin Vennemann's Close to Jedenew and Thomas Pletzinger's Funeral for a Dog. He was a 2003-2004 Fulbright Scholar in Berlin. He won the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar's Speak, Nabokov.