Confession of a Murderer

Description

From master storyteller Joseph Roth, author of The Radetzky March, comes an intense, lyrical work about love, hate and everything in between. A young man walks into a cafe in 1930s Paris. Listening to the babble of Russian emigres gossiping around him, he overhears people casually discussing a 'murderer' called Golubtschik sitting right there in the cafe. Intrigued and appalled, the young man settles down to listen to Golubtschik's life story after closing time. He spins a dark and captivating tale, detailing his story from its humble beginnings. The illegitimate son of a duke, he grew up with his poverty-stricken mother and her husband, always wondering how different his life might have been if he been brought up by the duke in luxurious surroundings. Recruited into the Russian secret service after a brush with the law, he travels to Paris and falls in love with the beautiful Lutetia, a volatile and enchanting woman. It is here in Paris that Golubtschik stumbles upon his legitimate half-brother in bed with Lutetia, and flies into a terrible rage. Beating them and leaving them for dead, he gets away with the crime and earns his reputation as a murderer.But as he finishes his tale in the Parisian cafe all these years later, there comes a twist to the tale which not even Golubtschik could have foreseen.

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was an Austrian journalist best known for his family saga The Radetzky March. He was Jewish, born in the Austro-Hungarian empire and served in the Habsburg Army during the First World War. He died in Paris in 1939.

'A self-destructive genius, the majestic chronicler of the anguish of exile' The Independent 'Roth's swift style makes things happen naturally; we see, hear, smell and believe. A joyous storyteller's gift remains precariously alive within the pessimism of decay and loss' The New York Times