''Hotel Savoy'' is a 1924 novel by the Austrian writer

Joseph Roth Moses Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga ''Radetzky March'' (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life ''Job'' ( ...

. Its story is set in the Hotel Savoy in

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...

, where lonely war veterans, variety dancers and others dream of better places. Hotel Savoy Lodz

Publication

The novel was serialised in the ''

Frankfurter Zeitung The ''Frankfurter Zeitung'' () was a German-language newspaper that appeared from 1856 to 1943. It emerged from a market letter that was published in Frankfurt. In Nazi Germany, it was considered the only mass publication not completely controlle ...

'' between 9 February and 16 March 1924. It was published in book form in Germany by

Verlag Die Schmiede ''Verlag Die Schmiede'' was an avant-garde literature publishing house in the 1920s in Berlin. It published works by Franz Kafka, Alfred Döblin, Joseph Roth, Rudolf Leonhard, and many more. Most of its dust jackets were designed by George Salter ...

later the same year. An English translation by John Hoare was published by

The Overlook Press The Overlook Press is an American publishing house based in New York, New York, that considers itself "a home for distinguished books that had been 'overlooked' by larger houses". History and operations It was formed in 1971 by Peter Mayer, who ...

in 1986.

Reception

Herbert Gold Herbert Gold (born March 9, 1924) is an American novelist. Early life Gold was born on March 9, 1924 in Cleveland, Ohio, in to a Russian Jewish family. His parents were Samuel S. and Frieda (Frankel) Gold. His father ran a fruit store and later a ...

reviewed the book for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' in 1987: "Like the ceiling of the hotel room, the narration is transparent, revealing a hallucinatory loneliness, a presence out of time, a soul floating in Middle and Eastern Europe. None of this is mere cafe surrealism or angst; one of Roth's achievements is to give a sense of strict accuracy; his story is a laconic scenario, with characters offered like facts." Gold continued: "Roth's swift style makes things happen naturally; we see, hear, smell and believe. A joyous storyteller's gift remains precariously alive within the pessimism of decay and loss. Although the teller of the tale says 'there is no end there, no break - always continuity and connection,' his art is kind and draws us to a satisfying conclusion after the luridness of events."

References

External links

''Hotel Savoy''
at Projekt Gutenberg-DE
Hotel Savoy in Łódź:Labyrinth of History & Exile
1924 German-language novels Austrian novels Novels by Joseph Roth Novels set in Łódź Novels set in hotels Novels set in the interwar period The Overlook Press books {{1920s-novel-stub

Publication

Reception

See also

References

External links