Tales from the Dual Monarchy: Twenty Austrian and Hungarian Stories from the Golden Age Before the First World War - Paperback

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was one of the most brilliant and prolific writers of the 20th century. Born into a Jewish family in Brody, on the eastern fringes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Roth's life and work were defined by the tension between his provincial roots and the cosmopolitan centers of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris.A legendary journalist who was once the highest-paid writer in Germany, Roth is best known for his monumental family saga, The Radetzky March, and his prophetic final novel, The Emperor's Tomb. His writing--described by the Los Angeles Times as "shattering in its simplicity"--expertly captures the displacement of the "homeless wanderer" in the wake of the Great War.Forced into exile in 1933 following the rise of the Nazi party, Roth spent his final years in Paris, writing feverishly while struggling with alcoholism and poverty. He died in 1939, just months before the outbreak of World War II, leaving behind a body of work that serves as a haunting, lyrical epitaph for the lost world of Central Europe.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was one of the greatest lyric German-language poets. Born in Prague, he published his first book of poems, Leben und Lieber, at age 19. In 1897 he met Lou Andreas-Salomé, the talented and spirited daughter of a Russian army officer, who influenced him deeply. In 1902 he became a friend, and for a time the secretary, of Rodin, and it was during his 12-year Paris residence that Rilke enjoyed his greatest poetic activity. In 1919 he went to Switzerland where he spent the last years of his life. It was there that he wrote his last two works, Duino Elegies (1923) and Sonnets to Orpheus (1923).