Endless Escape (novel) – Yozef Roth

"I did not create anything, I did not compose anything." This is how Yusef Roth writes in the introduction to his novel, to emphasize that he was observant, meticulous, a storyteller who understood early on that in this world he was a runaway with no end. Franz Tonda, the Austrian officer, succeeds in escaping from the Russians' captivity during World War I. He faces an adventure full of contradictions, where the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War take place, and then he moves between several cities such as Moscow, Baku, Berlin, and Paris. Each city was a temporary station where he prepared to leave – to escape endlessly, depicting the fallen Europe at that time from the perspective of the lost in the world. Roth does not protest the European conditions after the war; he merely states the facts. – Sigfrid Krackowar, German journalist and film critic. Yusef Roth did not just write a novel about the Soviet Union, but also about Europe after the war. The author was skeptical of the emerging Soviet Union due to its rooted brutality, which forced Tonda, a lover of freedom, to flee the country to the West. – Helmut Kessel, professor of modern German literature at Heidelberg University. Roth presented literature in the novel as an approach not devoid of flaws, which were closely examined within the relevant text. – Claudio Magris, Italian writer, translator, and specialist in German studies.