Tarabas by Joseph Roth first edition 1934

ROTH, Joseph. Tarabas. Ein Gast auf dieser Erde.
 
Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1934.
 
First edition in book form. Octavo. Original red cloth, lettered and ruled in black, in the first issue printed dust wrapper. pp. 288. Publisher's subscription card loosely inserted and bookplate of G. J. J. van Zijst-Schmidt to the front pastedown. Light foxing to the preliminary leaves, with occasional spotting elsewhere; cloth bright and clean. Dust wrapper somewhat marked and rubbed, with creasing and short tears at the extremities and small old tape repairs to the reverse. A very good copy in the scarce original dust wrapper.
 
The true first edition in book form of Joseph Roth's first novel written in exile following the Nazi seizure of power. Tarabas was initially serialised between January and March 1934 in the Pariser Tageblatt, the German-language anti-Nazi newspaper published in Paris, before appearing shortly afterwards in this edition from Querido Verlag in Amsterdam.
 
The novel follows Nikolaus Tarabas, a violent and restless Russian landowner's son who, after a prophecy that he will become both a murderer and a saint, travels from New York to Galicia and serves through the upheavals of the First World War and its aftermath. Drawn into military violence, revolution and religious hatred, Tarabas becomes implicated in an antisemitic pogrom before abandoning power and seeking redemption through poverty, repentance and service to others. His journey from brutality to penitence allowed Roth to explore individual guilt against a background of war, nationalism and collective violence.
 
Roth had left Germany almost immediately after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 and settled in Paris, correctly recognising that Jewish and politically independent writers would have no future under National Socialism. His books were no longer publishable within Germany, while German-language authors in exile had been separated almost overnight from their established publishers and readership. Querido Verlag, founded in Amsterdam in 1933, became one of the most important publishers of German exile literature, issuing works by writers banned or displaced by the Nazi regime.
 
A particularly desirable survival in the striking first issue dust wrapper, advertising other works by the leading writers of the German exile community.