BOOKS EBOOKS RARE BOOKS CLASSICAL CDs DVDs PRINTED MUSIC PODCASTS OFFERS
Click here to take a virtual tour of Blackwells, Oxford

 
ISBN: 9781862074712 - The Legend of the Holy Drinker
 Enlarge Bookmark and Share

The Legend of the Holy Drinker

Joseph Roth

ISBN: 9781862074712
Format: Paperback
Publisher:Granta Books
Edition: New edition


Rating:   Write a review

This tale of an alcoholic is a secular, miracle story, that describes the fortunes of a vagrant who, after living under bridges, has a series of lucky breaks that lift him briefly onto a different plane of existence.

  Synopsis Details Reviews  
This book, one of the most haunting things that Roth ever composed, was published in 1939, the year the author died. Like Andreas, the hero of the story, Roth drank himself to death in Paris, but this is not an autobiographical confession. It is a secular miracle-tale, in which the vagrant Andreas, after living under bridges, has a series of lucky breaks that lift him briefly onto a different plane of existence. The novella is extraordinarily compressed, dry-eyed and witty, despite its melancholic subject-matter. The Legend of the Holy Drinker was tumed into a film by Enrico Olmi, starring Rutger Hauer.
 
    Printable