Rebellion

From Joseph Roth, an allegorical yet decidedly modern novelist, comes this story of postwar disillusion, the limits of faith, and “personal fate as governed by the blind, casual workings of a machine controlled by no one and for which no one is responsible” (The New York Times).

When Andreas Pum returns from World War I, he has lost a leg but gained a medal. But unlike his fellow sufferers, Pum maintains his unswerving faith in God, Government, and Authority. Ironically, after a dispute, Pum is imprisoned as a rebel, and all that he believed in is now thrown into upheaval. Moving along at a breakneck clip, Rebellion captures the cynicism and upheavals of a postwar society. Its jazz-like cadences mix with social commentary to create a wise parable about justice and society.

“Roth's tale has that very European, straightforward, fairy-tale logic that makes everything both inevitable yet strangely nightmarish. You wouldn't be far wrong to think of Roth as occupying the fourth corner of a square whose other apices are Kafka, Musil, and Stefan Zweig.” —The Guardian

“A brilliantly allegorical writer . . . Rebellion is reminiscent of Chekhov in its uncluttered, melancholy simplicity, while its sense of the larger, crushing incomprehensibility of things echoes Roth's older contemporary, Frank Kafka.” —Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

“ Rebellion puts the last piece of the Roth puzzle in place, leaving readers the gratifying task of exploring the manifold dimensions of this marvelous writer.” —The Boston Globe