There are two notable diamond jubilees this year: the obvious one and Jewish Book Week (JWB). The festival opened last weekend and will run at Kings Place in London until Sunday evening, when David Aaronovitch and Umberto Eco will end proceedings with a discussion about the latter’s novel, The Prague Cemetery.
JBW is a celebration of literature; but, as one might expect, Jewish identity is central to most events. Yesterday afternoon saw Dennis Marks and Michael Hofmann debating the life and work of Joseph Roth — one of that band of writers (Kafka, Mann and Zweig) who described southern and eastern Europe during and after the collapse of the Hapsburg empire.
Like Kafka and Zweig, Roth was Jewish — although he described that heritage as an ‘accidental quality’. Roth has been branded a ‘self-hating Jew’, a charge inspired by his pronounced opposition to Zionism on the grounds that all nationalism is corrosive.
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