The Spider's Web and Zipper and His Father

Two novellas of rare energy, The Spider's Web and Zipper and His Father are filled with Joseph Roth's surprising political foresight and compassionate sensitivity to the tremors of a world on the brink of collapse. The Spider's Web paints a chillingly realistic picture of the conspiracies that paved the way for the rise of Hitler. Zipper and His Father chronicles the progress of a father and son through the febrile world of German cinema in the 1920s.

Publishers Weekly

These novellas portray Germany between the wars. In the first, anti-Semitic and anti-Communist WW I veteran Theodore Lohse devotes himself to an underground terrorist network; the latter recalls the Weimar Republic and German cinema of the '20s. (Dec.)

Joseph Roth was born in 1894 in Galicia. He worked as a journalist following World War I and died in Paris in 1939, leaving behind thirteen novels as well as many stories and essays. Overlook will continue its Joseph Roth program with Hotel Savoy and Right and Left/Legend of the Holy Drinker.