Hotel Savoy

By Joseph Roth

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Oct 28, 2003
• ISBN: 9781590209585

Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) nació en Brody, un pueblo situado hoy en Ucrania, que por entonces pertenecía a la Galitzia Oriental, provincia del viejo Imperio austrohúngaro. El escritor, hijo de una mujer judía cuyo marido desapareció antes de que él naciera, vio desmoronarse la milenaria corona de los Habsburgo y cantó el dolor por «la patria perdida» en narraciones como Fuga sin fin, La cripta de los Capuchinos o las magníficas novelas Job y La Marcha Radetzky. En El busto del emperador describió el desarraigo de quienes vieron desmembrarse aquella Europa cosmopolita bajo el odio de la guerra.  En su lápida quedaron reflejadas su procedencia y profesión: «Escritor austriaco muerto  en París».

Reviews for Hotel Savoy

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To me, the paintings of Otto Dix most powerfully show the broken people who came back from the front of World War I, particularly paintings such as "Prager Strasse" (1920).In a similar way, Hotel Savoy is a novel about a collection of "broken people," bankrupt, scattered but come together in a "louche" hotel, all hoping and looking out for a fabled, rich American. A story of poverty and despair.

[akfarrar · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

.... an American returnee who will solve all the financial troubles of a whole host of shadowy characters trapped in the Hotel Savoy.The Hotel itself seems to function as a mixture between a spider's web and a somnifer! It is a trap for those returning from the First World War, for the poor and for the once rich.There is a missing Greek owner, an old lift boy who holds the trunks of poor guests as security against payment, and a factory owner who is less concerned with the ongoing strike in his factory than trying to make money through speculation on the currency market.Throughout the short novel there is an awful sense of an imploding world - of a suspended collapse just waiting for a trigger to release it. The characters seem to wish it and at the same time dread the event.The trigger is provided in the end by one of those silly, unimportant events which are of no significance in themselves.There is something truly tragic and at the same time terrifying in this story of a Hotel peopled as it is by the flotsam of a disintegrated world.