2007 books

[peteryoung]

61) Joseph Roth, The Spider's Web, 1923
I began reading Joseph Roth with his last novel The Legend of the Holy Drinker, concluded that he was worth exploring more, and his first novel The Spider's Web absolutely confirms that reckoning. He paints a disturbing picture of post-WW1 Germany, and shows how the seeds of its unfinished war with itself fractured the country still further with the conspiracies of the radical right undermining the Weimar Republic. The writing is often urgent and relentlessly assertive, but with it you get the inside track on what drives Roth's cunning, duplicitous and feral characters to survive in a dangerous time of national schism. Also worth remembering is that it was written long before the rise of Hitler and National Socialism, which makes the conclusion all the more prophetic and chilling. Excellent.