Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Machine generated contents note: Envoi -- 1.A Man Reads the Paper -- pt. I Germany -- 2.Of Dogs and Men -- 3.Millionaire for an Hour -- 4.The Umbrella -- 5.The Emigrants' Ship -- 6.The Currency-Reformed City -- 7.Baltic Tour -- 8.Melancholy of a Tram Car in the Ruhr -- 9.Smoke Joins up the Towns -- 10.Germany in Winter -- 11.Retrospect of Magdeburg -- pt. II Sketches -- 12.The Fraternity Member -- 13.Guillaume the Blond Negro -- 14.Adventurers -- 15.The Mother -- 16.Rose Gentschow -- 17.Two Gypsy Girls -- 18.Crock -- 19.The Dapper Traveller -- pt. III Austria and Elsewhere -- 20.Brack and Kiralyhida -- 21.Journey through Galicia: People and Place -- 22.The Polish California -- 23.Hotel Kopriva -- 24.The All-Powerful Police -- 25.Where the World War Began -- 26.The Opened Tomb -- 27.His K. and K. Apostolic Majesty -- pt. IV USSR -- 28.The Czarist Emigres -- 29.The Border at Niegoreloye -- 30.Down the Volga to Astrakhan -- 31.The Wonders of Astrakhan -- 32.Saint Petroleum --

Contents note continued: pt. V Albania -- 33.A Meeting with President Ahmed Zogu -- 34.Arrival in Albania -- 35.Tirana, the Capital City -- 36.The Albanian Army -- 37.Western Visitors in Barbaria -- 38.Article about Albania (Written on a Hot Day) -- pt. VI Hotels -- 39.Arrival in the Hotel -- 40.The Chief Receptionist -- 41.The Old Waiter -- 42.The Cook in his Kitchen -- 43."Madame Annette" -- 44.The Patron -- 45.Leaving the Hotel -- 46.The Hotel -- pt. VII Pleasures and Pains -- 47.Spring -- 48.People in Glass Cages -- 49.People on Sunday -- 50.The Office -- 51.The Destruction of a Cafe -- 52.Music in the Volksgarten -- 53.The Strange City -- 54.Travel -- 55.The "Romance" of Travel -- 56.The Lady in the Compartment -- 57.Morning at the Junction -- pt. VIII Ending -- 58.The Old Poet Dies -- 59.The Third Reich, a Dependency of Hell on Earth -- 60.Far from the Native Turf -- 61.Grillparzer: a Portrait -- 62.The Bitter Bread -- 63.Furlough in Jablonovka -- Coda -- 64.Cradle.

The hotel that I love like a fatherland is situated in one of the great port cities of Europe, and the heavy gold Antiqua letters in which its banal name is spelled out shining across the roofs of the gently banked houses are in my eye metal flags, metal bannerets that instead of fluttering shine out their greeting. In the 1920s and 30s, Joseph Roth travelled extensively in Europe, leading a peripatetic life living in hotels and writing about the towns through which he passed. Incisive, nostalgic, curious and sharply observed - and collected together here for the first time - his pieces paint a picture of a continent racked by change yet clinging to tradition. From the 'compulsive' exercise regime of the Albanian army, the rickety industry of the new oil capital of Galicia, and 'split and scalped' houses of Tirana forced into modernity, to the individual and idiosyncratic characters that Roth encounters in his hotel stays, these tender and quietly dazzling vignettes form a series of literary postcards written from a bygone world, creeping towards world war; introduced and exquisitely translated by Michael Hofmann.

Translated from the German.