First thoughts: The Hotel Years
Roth wrote and lived in exceptionally turbulent times in European history. He witnessed the disastrous consequences of the newly-formed centrally planned economy in the Soviet Union, when he travelled there as reporter. He also saw how the rise of fascism turned Germany in the 1930s into a super-nationalistic xenophobic state.
Roth, a Galician Jew, who never quite assimilated into any society, died tragically of alcoholism, almost penniless, in Paris in 1939, at just 44 years of age.
