O Pobre e o Rico: Joseph Roth e Stefan Zweig

Resenha de dois livros Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters, Granta, 512pp, £25; Three Lives, a Biography of Stefan Zweig Oliver Matuschek; Pushkin Press, 381pp, £20, escrita por Allan Massie: Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig belonged to that vanished common culture. They were Jews and they were German authors, both born as subjects of the Habsburg emperor, Franz Joseph, Roth in the extreme east of the empire, Zweig in Vienna. Both were prolific writers, Zweig a very successful one, Roth the author of at least one masterpiece, The Radetzky March. Zweig was rich, Roth poor. Zweig lived for some years in a castle just outside Salzburg, Roth was a transient, moving with his two suitcases from city to city and hotel room to hotel room. Both were victims of Hitler's frenzy, if indirectly, Roth dying of liver failure in Paris in 1939, aged only 45, Zweig committing suicide along with his second wife in exile in Brazil a couple of years later. They were unlikely friends, but they were friends, and their friendship survived Roth's incessant borrowing, Zweig's letters full of good advice, Roth's dependency and inability to follow that advice, the exasperation each often provoked in the other.