Tarabas A Guest on Earth by Joseph Roth (1934, translated by Winifred Katzin)

I offer my great thanks to Max u for the gift card which made reading this book possible.

My Posts on Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth's oeuvre  is one of the great treasures of 20th century European literature.  I started out with, as most do and neophytes should, with his acknowledged by all master work The Radetsky March.  Next I read the sequel to this work, The Emperor's Tomb, then one of my personal favorites of his novels, Savoy Hotel.  So far I have read nine of his novels, three novellas, and two collections of essays.  There are six more novels to go and I hope to read them all.  None of his novels are very long and there has not been one I had to drag my way through yet.   Some of his work, as does Tarabas A Guest on Earth partially,focuses on the fate of the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia.  

Tarabas A Guest on Earth is set during the period of The Russian Civil War.  (I recently read a very good  book on this period, Former People The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith and this book and Roth's work perfectly together.  I once had a romantic view of White Russians but this view did not withstand my exposure to the historical reality of the bloody pograms of the White Russians.

When we first meet Tarabas he is living in New York City.  He misses his home but has found a Russian girlfriend.  It was a great pleasure to read Roth's depiction of New York City life (I wish so much he could have moved there around 1932 when he left Austria for Paris, to escape the coming Nazi rule of Austria).  He gets in a jealousy caused fight with a bar owner in NYC and when he hears war has broken out in Russia he at once decides to fight in that war.  

We next meet Tarabas on his father's property in eastern Russia.  The country is in complete turmoil.  The Czar has been killed and there is not yet a viable government in place.  He and his father have a strained relationship.  He wants to marry a cousin who works on the farm but he is forced into a White Russian brigade.  He has no sense of the various ideologies involved,  but he does hate Jews, especially red haired ones.  He favorable impresses the commander and he makes him a captain.  He turns out to be an excellent leader, admired by his men.  We go along as the troops roam the anarchic Russian countryside.  The White Russians blamed Jews for the revolution and Tarabas and his men were involved in vicious pograms against totally harmless people.  He ends up being promoted to a colonel.   Many of his men begin to desert as the war makes no sense to them.  Many are killed.  He has a small cadre of soldiers who have been with him for a while and some few of these are loyal.

He ends up back on his father's farm.  Years have gone by.  His parents exhibit less than the joy he had hoped for on his return and the girl he loved married a German and has moved to Germany.  He accepts this.  He has perhaps gained some wisdom from his troubles.  The ending I will leave untold.

Tarabas   A Guest On Earth has lots of great details and marvelous descriptions of the events of the period.  It is the story of a man caught up in the turmoil of his times.  The characters are very well developed.  It has a kind of the feel of a fable.  

I will next read his novel Rebellion. 

Mel u