Parisian nights

Since 1925, Paris became the most important city in Joseph Roth's life: here he found his unmistakable style, here he spent the last fifteen years of his short life after France had become his country of exile, and here he was buried on May 30, 1939. When he first arrived in the French capital on behalf of the Frankfurter Zeitung, it struck him like a revelation. He wrote: "Whoever has not been here is only half a person and not a European at all." In Paris, Roth suddenly felt liberated from his existential crises. The city challenged him with its modernity and overwhelming diversity. The immediate result was a series of letters and essays that established Roth as a radical chronicler of the vibrant metropolis and one of the most sensitive journalists of his generation.