On the end of the world

GENERAL & LITERARY FICTION. 'What seething activity in this world, an hour before its end! The ministers, Europe's racing waiters, run from one lost position to another and fresh misfortune flourishes in the ruins!' Having fled to Paris in 1933, following Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Joseph Roth wrote a series of articles in that 'hour before the end of the world', that he foresaw was to come and which would culminate in the Second World War. This collection of Roth's haunting journalistic essays has never before been translated into English and forms the latest installment in Hesperus' bestselling On series. Incisive and ironic, the writing evokes Roth's bitterness and 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.