This compelling work explores the profound experiences of persecution and exile as seen through the interconnected lives of three remarkable writers: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and Walter Benjamin. All three were displaced and hunted to death by fascism. Their literary brilliance, tumultuous lives and tragic ends continue to captivate the imagination and inspire. By bringing together the extraordinary stories of Zweig, Roth and Benjamin for the first time in a single overview, Richard Harper offers a thought-provoking examination of the meaning and feeling of displacement, so highly relevant to the widespread and challenging issues of persecution and migration today.

"Three dazzling but doomed literary talents. Three interlocking biographies drawn from the darkest chapter of Jewish experience in 20th century Europe. Richard Harper's concise and commanding account of the shared destinies of Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and Walter Benjamin wraps the harrowing realities of exile around philosophical questions of art, nationalism and Jewish identity. As we face a growing refugee crisis today, the message of 'Displacement' could not be more relevant."

Jeremy Myerson, Professor Emeritus, Royal College of Art

 

“Displacement: Zweig, Roth and Benjamin is a timely study of three powerful writers whose lives were suddenly upended by the Nazis’ coming to power. Like millions of others, they were forced from their homes and places of safety. As contributors to a radical literary Mitteleuropa in the 1920s and 1930s, they found themselves displaced from the cultural worlds that they inhabited and shaped. In this neat and thoughtful survey of their overlapping lives and times, Richard Harper reminds us why we should read and re-read these writers again today. As he shows, they are a ‘warning sign’ of how the seemingly secure foundations of civilised society can collapse when persecution and hatred become a new kind of orthodoxy.”   

Dr Mark Donnelly, Associate Professor, History, St Mary’s University, Twickenham