Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth in Ostend

Zweig and Roth in Ostend, 1936: a terrifying image of Joseph Roth

The idea of two famous Jewish writers meeting in exile in Ostend in 1936 as their world disappears around them is such a powerful image that the story could hardly fail to be fascinating, if desperate.

Yet Volker Weidermann, author of Summer before the Dark (2014) almost manages to mangle the story. Vague when he should be precise, and detailed when any reader would expect to have more evidence of where the information is obtained, he manages not to tell us what makes Zweig and Roth distinctive and leaves us guessing for more of the story to make it intelligible. It is a book with no index, no sources, no citations, no chapters. The translator appears to have added a few notes about some of the characters, but these notes are inadequate.

As for missing details, how about:

• (page 21) “Belgium, that glorious country … that had heroically resisted all invaders over the centuries”. Since Belgium only became a nation state in 1830, that hardly seems an apt comment.
• (page 68) “She travels to Brussels for the day. She’s been told she could get to know Hermann Kesten there.” Who is Kesten? we are told a little in the following pages, but it is typical of Weidermann’s style to introduce characters without any description, or even, at times, without any name.
• (page 140) “From his homeland … It’s Festival time, as it is every year.” Which festival? Would you like to tell us? We guess half a page later, but why does the author play this guessing game with his readers?
• Ostend figures loosely in the narrative, but two pages (92-94) are dedicated to a murder that took place there. An account was written by Hermann Kesten, but are we supposed to believe that Ostend is exceptional for murders? Or that the group of exiles took any interest in Ostend, apart from it being a conveniently neutral base?
• (page 98) As for sexual politics, this is a book where the women are subservient, even to men who are drinking themselves to death. And, of course, young women are stunningly attractive:  “Wherever she goes with him, writers almost go crazy at the sight of her youth and beauty”.  This is a description of Christiane Grautoff, whom Roth met when she was 15.
• (page 116) “Irmgard Keun loves Joseph Roth and sees into him more deeply than anyone ever has.” If this were romantic fiction, I wouldn’t question such a statement, but given Roth’s advanced alcoholism, it might perhaps be more accurate to say she is prepared to drink with him more than anyone else does – a rather different relationship.
• (page 143) Zweig is preparing to travel to Argentina and he and his partner are learning Spanish. But on page 150 he arrives in Brazil, and spends the rest of his life there. It would be interesting to know how the switch occurred. On page 152 we learn he only planned to spend two weeks in Argentina. They don’t speak Spanish in Brazil. Am I the only one to be confused by this narrative?

Finally, it isn’t clear from this book why Zweig committed suicide, or even what happened to his wife Lotte. Weidermann writes that Zweig was received with adulation when he arrived in Brazil, and writes of Zweig’s “love for Brazil” (page 152). It’s a bit of a jump to committing joint suicide a few pages later. Here is literature reduced to Sunday newspaper journalism, sex, scandal and drinking, with little care if the pieces don’t all hang together. For me, the final straw was the quote from the FT on the cover of the English paperback edition, a club-footed and tasteless comment on what is after all the description of an alcoholic writer's decline and death:

"Death in Venice with more sex, more booze, more action".