Endless Flight

The acclaimed first English-language biography of the great European novelist and journalist, Joseph Roth, author of The Radetzky March, a writer who captured life in Europe between the wars like no other.

Fascinating, sophisticated, meticulous: this biography of Joseph Roth catches his cosmopolitan spirit, turbulent nature and literary genius amidst the melancholy of a darkening age

Utterly engrossing. Endless Flight is a biography of deep humanity, one that captures the individual, the place and the times with acute and affecting brilliance. I loved it

A novelist of genius, an anti-nationalist prophet in the wilderness, a human being capable of the monstrous: Endless Flight does humane and painstaking justice to all these aspects, and more, of Joseph Roth's short, utterly compelling life. Anyone who reckons The Radetzky March one of the supreme twentieth-century novels will devour Keiron Pim's biography avariciously

A superb biography - fascinating, shrewd, insightful. Finally, Joseph Roth's extraordinary life is recounted for his multitude of English readers in compelling detail... Enthralling

It's incredible that it's taken this long for an English-language biography of Joseph Roth to appear-and incredibly fortunate that Keiron Pim has been the one to do it, evoking with compassion and depth the work and the world of one of the greatest of modern writers

A remarkable and penetrating study of Roth's life and times. Today, even more of the world finds itself in endless flight. As such, this beautiful, timely and critically important book introduces English readers to an indispensable guide both to Roth's past and to our present

Pim has told this vital and singular story with the deft tenacity and the passionate flexibility of attitude and tone that it requires, and his book is a mighty achievement

Kieron Pim combines admirably lucid prose with exhaustive research and a great affection for his subject... A thoughtful, absorbing and assured account of a great author's complex, rootless and ultimately tragic life... [Endless Flight is] an indispensable guide to [Roth's] life and work, and essential reading for admirers and newcomers.

Almost unbearably affecting. Make no mistake, this biography is a masterpiece

This wonderful biography is a major contribution to the appreciation of Joseph Roth in the English-speaking world. Roth's unique genius is richly portrayed, as are the turbulent times that formed him. A propulsive journey through European, Jewish, and literary life between the wars

This resplendent biography not only opens for us a window into a life unknown, but serves up a mirror inviting us to take a look at our own lives. We are left in no doubt that the forces that rended Roth's world are still active in ours

Absorbing... This is a thoughtful, thorough, and sympathetic book, and a necessary one... Endless Flight is a welcome aid for people like me who can't read Roth, or his critics and biographers, in German, and for any English-language readers who might want an introduction to his work. And now, more than ever, is the time to read him

[Roth's] fiction may rob us of our illusions, but he singlehandedly, and with an extraordinary story-teller's gift of elegance and wit, cleared Europe's literary decks of their 19th-century hangovers and readied it for modernity. This fine biography, with its spirited, shrewd, thorough understanding of its times, shows us exactly what that cost its subject

Thrilling... Pim's detective work, untangling Roth's tortured (sometimes maddening) contradictions, is enormously impressive, and his analysis of Roth's work is incisive and sometimes revelatory. But what really drives this biography is Pim's deep sympathy for Roth, which he sustains without ever glamorising or sentimentalising his subject

Thankfully, with Endless Flight, we finally have an English language biography of Roth. And biographer Pim is worthy of the mammoth task at hand, chronicling the complex story of Roth's ultimately tragic life with sensitivity, intelligence, and some serious and revelatory research... an important biography

Pim's... effort to understand the man in full is profound and the result feels definitive. His research empowers him to be rigorously sceptical... Pim steadily builds the case that Roth's vagabond life - he lived out of three suitcases and was happiest in hotels - was his animating paradox

Keiron Pim... brings all the details of this consistently creative but wretched life together in an engrossing fashion, giving all the historical context we might need... His analysis of Roth's novels is clear and convincing, clear of any fanciful conjecture

Deeply considered, rigorously researched and brimming with fascinating details and insights, it situates the man and his work in their wider political and social context, ably showing how Roth "drew from his multiple traumas to create works that endure owing to their conscience, percipience [and] ironic humour"

Pim's masterstoke is to view Roth first and foremost as a writer... Pim is scrupulous in his research and fair in his assessments, but he goes beyond observing such biographer's duties... The further Pim delves, the richer the picture becomes

Vivid... convincing... It is Keiron Pim's substantial achievement in Endless Flight to have shown us the magnitude of Roth's struggle in a turbulent era that has alarming parallels with our own

Really sympathetic and gets [Roth's] contradictions... Couldn't be more relevant

Pim is particularly good on Roth's Jewishness... A dark story, movingly told

Timely... Keiron Pim's is the first English-language biography of Roth, and what a superb book it is - impeccably researched, extremely readable and, it must be said, grimly relevant... Unfailingly well-written and informative, Endless Flight is a grand tribute to one of the most discomfiting literary geniuses of the 20th century

With the publication of Keiron Pim's Endless Flight, it's as if the shutters have been flung open and the lights switched on. English readers finally have a comprehensive, detailed and supremely empathetic account of Roth's whole life, researched with breathtaking thoroughness and told with a transparency and a compassion worthy of Roth's own writing... A masterly and moving biography, and anyone interested in the fate of European culture in the 20th century will want to read it. And then, as with Roth's own work, to return and re-read it in mounting gratitude, pity and wonder

Capably carried out

A fitting account of one of Europe's great, troubled literary geniuses

Richly detailed, insightful and compendious, this biography supplies all the information on Roth's tormented, rootless, inebriated life: good and bad, noble and shameful. We have the work - now we have the man. A great deal is explained and clarified as a result

Reading Pim's sparkling, effervescent study of Roth's life, it seems his gifts flourished not in spite of his suffering but because of it

Keiron Pim is a determined, persistent biographer. There are no easy subjects in his eye; instead, he focuses on figures we know little about, who we want to know more about, and then, in a meticulous, no-stone-unturned pursuit of their lives, tells us a fascinating story about even more fascinating characters

Keiron Pim joins Roth on his rackety grand European tour and with him recaptures that age

Keiron Pim is the author of critically acclaimed Jumpin' Jack Flash: David Litvinoff and the Rock'n'Roll Underworld which was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and shortlisted in the Wales Book of the Year Awards' category for Creative Non-Fiction. He has written articles for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator. Alongside his writing, Pim works as a proofreader, an editor and a mentor to aspiring non-fiction authors. He lives in Norwich with his wife and three daughters.