Spotlight on “Weights and Measures” by Joseph Roth

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This deeply moving, deeply philosophical story set in Ukraine touches on timeless themes of uprooted identity, destiny, and loneliness.

About Weights and Measures

Joseph Roth’s haunting novel, Weights and Measures, is back in print, offering readers another chance to delve into the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Originally published in 1937, this tale of a man grappling with corruption and moral decay in a border town resonates with a chilling relevance even today.

Widely praised and rarely available in English, Weights and Measures builds on Roth’s most famous work, The Radetzky March. Among his final works, this fable about the disintegration of a good man transports us back in time to Eastern Europe’s borderlands in the early 20th century.

In this haunting and poetic novel, scrupulous artillery officer Anselm Eibenschütz is persuaded by his wife to leave behind his job as an artilleryman in the Austro-Hungarian army and take up a civilian post as Inspector of Weights and Measures in a secluded territory near the Russian border. Once there, his discipline and quiet dignity begin to dissolve as he encounters a shadowy world of smugglers, fugitives, and runaways.

His new post brings him face-to-face with smugglers, gamblers, and a world where the lines between right and wrong blur.  When personal tragedy strikes, Eibenschütz finds himself drawn into a spiral of despair and destructive choices.

Roth masterfully captures the atmosphere of uncertainty and disillusionment that pervaded the era. Weights and Measures is not merely a historical novel; it’s a timeless exploration of human nature, the erosion of values, and the search for meaning in a world on the brink. 

A deeply felt commentary on the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Weights and Measures registers on both a historical and personal level to portray the slow capitulation of a good man to insidious small-time corruption and to his own destructive passion. 

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: outstanding classic storytelling from around the world, in a stylishly original series design. From newly rediscovered gems to fresh translations of the world’s greatest authors, this series includes such authors as Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Gaito Gazdanov.

Source: Publisher
ISBN-13: 9781805330653
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Publication date: 10/29/2024

Praise for Weights and Measures

“Published in Amsterdam in 1934 and translated into English in 1982, this book offers the perils of Eibensch tz, who, on the urging of his wife, takes a job as a weights and measures inspector. He soon learns that his wife is cheating on him, he has no hope of being effective in his post owing to criminal activity, and the woman to whom his own affections have strayed is sleeping with the area’s leading smuggler.”––Library Journal

About Joseph Roth, Author of Weights and Measures

Joseph Roth was born into a Jewish family in the small town of Brody in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied first in Lemberg and then in Vienna, and served in the Austrian army during World War I. He later worked as a journalist in Vienna and Berlin, traveling widely, staying in hotels and living out of suitcases, while also being a prolific writer of fiction, including the novels Job (1930) and The Radetzky March (1932). Roth left Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933 and settled in Paris, where he died in 1939.

You can read more about Joseph Roth and Weights and Measures on Wikipedia here.

Titles by Joseph Roth

Other LitStack Resources

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Be sure and look at our other LitStack Recs for our recommendations on books you should read, as well as these reviews by Lauren Alwan, and these reviews by Rylie Fong, Allie Coker, and Sharon Browning.

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