The Coral Merchant : Essential Stories

New translations of the greatest short stories by Joseph Roth, collected in a beautiful edition

Joseph Roth's sensibility - both clear-eyed and nostalgic, harshly realistic and tenderly humane - produced some of the most distinctive fiction of the twentieth century. This selection of his finest shorter work, in exquisite new translations by Ruth Martin, showcases Roth's peerless skill as an observer of social discord and individual frailty.

A coral merchant, longing for the sea, chooses to adulterate his wares with false corla, with catastrophic results; young Fini, just entering the haze of early sexuality, falls into an unsatisfying relationship with an older musician. In prose of fluid beauty and wry precision, Roth shows us isolated souls pursuing lost ideals in the Austro-Hungarian empire's dying days.

JOSEPH ROTH was born into a Jewish family in the small town of Brody in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied first in Lemberg and then in Vienna, and served in the Austrian army during the first World War. He later worked a a journalist in Vienna and Berlin, travelling widely, staying in hotels and living out of suitcases while also being a prolific writer of fiction, including the novels Job (1930) and The Radetsky March (1932). Roth left Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933 and settled in Paris. He collapsed at the Café Touron in May 1939 and died shortly after.


  1. Deutschland: Das große Hörbuch der deutschen Literatur : Bibliothek der Klassiker

    Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Joseph von Eichendorff, Stefan Zweig, Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Schiller, Joseph Roth, Jakob Wassermann, Hans Fallada, Franz Kafka

    audiobook
  2. Joseph Roth: Die große Hörbuch Box : Seine schönsten Romane und Erzählungen

    Joseph Roth

    audiobook
  3. Meisterwerke der deutschen Literatur : 100 Klassiker, die man kennen muss

    Rainer Maria Rilke, Hans Fallada, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Stefan Zweig, Franz Kafka, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Klaus Mann, Hermann Broch, Heinrich Mann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Schiller, Robert Musil, Joseph Roth, Heinrich von Kleist, Kurt Tucholsky, Ödön von Horváth, Karl May, Wilhelm Busch, Heinrich Hoffmann, Johanna Spyri, Else Lasker-Schüler, Georg Büchner, Joseph von Eichendorff, Arthur Schnitzler, Theodor Storm, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Christoph Martin Wieland, E. T. A. A Hoffmann, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Frank Wedekind, Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, Adelbert von Chamisso, Arthur Schopenhauer, August Klingemann, Novalis, Friedrich Hölderlin, Jean Paul, Gottfried von Straßburg, Sigmund Freud, Elisabeth Langgässer, Gottfried August Bürger, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Sebastian Brant, Hermann Bote, Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, Hildegard von Bingen

    book
  4. Radetzkymarsch

    Joseph Roth

    book
  5. Radetzkymarsjen

    Joseph Roth

    audiobook
  6. Juden auf Wanderschaft

    Joseph Roth

    audiobook
  7. Die westlichen Gettos

    Joseph Roth

    audiobook
  8. Die Lage der Juden in Sowjetrussland

    Joseph Roth

    audiobook
  9. Ein Jude geht nach Amerika

    Joseph Roth

    audiobook
  10. Die westlichen Gettos (Paris)

    Joseph Roth

    audiobook
  11. Die westlichen Gettos (Berlin)

    Joseph Roth

    audiobook
  12. Die westlichen Gettos (Wien)

    Joseph Roth

    audiobook