Book Description
Job is the tale of Mendel Singer, a pious, destitute Eastern-European Jew and children’s Torah teacher whose faith is tested at every turn. His youngest son seems to be incurably disabled, one of his older sons joins the Russian Army, the other deserts to America, and his daughter is running around with a Cossack. When he flees with his wife and daughter, further blows of fate await him. In this modern fable based on the biblical story of Job, Mendel Singer witnesses the collapse of his world, experiences unbearable suffering and loss, and ultimately gives up hope and curses God, only to be saved by a miraculous reversal of fortune.
Joseph Roth was a permanent novelist. His Job was a worthy precursor of that masterpiece [The Radetzky March] . . . [Job is] both immensely sorrowful and finally strangely hopeful.
— Harold Bloom
The totality of Joseph Roth's work is no less than a tragédie humaine achieved in the techniques of modern fiction.
— Nadine Gordimer
Job is perfect. . . . a novel as lyric poem.
— Joan Acocella
This life of an everyday man moves us as if someone had written of our lives, our longings, our struggles. Roth’s language has the discipline and rigor of German Classicism. A great and harrowing book that no one can resist.
— Ernst Toller
Job is more than a novel and legend, it is a pure, perfect poetic work, which is destined to outlast everything that we, his contemporaries, have created and written. In unity of construction, in depth of feeling, in purity, in the musicality of the language, it can scarcely be surpassed.
— Stefan Zweig
This sensitivity gives us a novel that is both mythical in its reach and surprisingly personal in its depth.
— Words Without Borders
Roth pushes the story relentlessly, sweetly forward, if only in the hope that there must be something to hope for. The result is a beautifully written, and in the end uplifting, parable for an era of upheaval.
— The Quarterly Conversation
Joseph Roth’s Job proposes a 20th century version of the Biblical parable of loss and restoration, and Ross Benjamin’s graceful new translation of this 80-year-old work makes an excellent reason to revisit it.
— Jewish Book World