Book Review: Flight Without End by Joseph Roth

A novel about an uprooted man who survived a war and is on a search of his past.

Franz Tunda, an Austrian army officer, is captured by the Russian army in World War I and is imprisoned in Siberia. He escapes and lives on a farm with a Siberian Pole. After years, when he realizes that the war is over, he takes up the surname of the Pole and starts a journey to his homeland. But then he finds out that he is uprooted by the war. His only connection with the past is an old photograph of his fiancée, with whom he had engaged before the war. We find Tunda trying to find his way in a changed world, floating across the continent in search of his past, which he isn't sure may even recognize him when confronted.

'Flight Without End' is a novel written by Joseph Roth and was originally published in German in 1927. The novel explores the themes of alienation, individualism, displacement, and search for identity in the background of the decimation of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the disorientation that it caused all over Europe. The novel spans several localities and covers many historic events like World War I, the Russian Revolution, the ensuing Civil War, and the overall economic slump all over Europe. I received a review copy of the novel by the publisher Pushkin Press through NetGalley in exchange for feedback.

The novel has a very interesting style of narration. In the foreword, the writer absolves himself of any 'poetic invention' and claims that what follows are 'observed facts.'. But while reading the book, we are able to see how Roth has used the foreword cleverly as part of his narrative, and the entire book is, in fact, his 'poetic invention.' The writer adopts a very formal style of narration, like a mundane report. But buried inside it, we find deep and detailed descriptions of the society, the psychology of people, and ironic moments of wry humor. The plot is narrated by the author, who appears in it as a fictional version of himself. We also get some first-person accounts by the protagonist through his journal and letters.

The novel is a brilliant and profound exploration of the making of the disenchanted modern human who was born out of large-scale violence and chaos from a long and arduous war. It is the story of people who lost their past and history, searching for their future in the fragments of a shattered present. It is about two ideologies generated across the opposites of a continent, which appear conflicting but are essentially born from the same flames of disappointment. It contains themes of alienation and the search for self, which became a salient feature of the European novels for decades.

While reading this book, I came to realise that how a fictional work can give more information on the history of a period and place than elaborate writings by professional historians. While it does not detail specific events and individuals, after reading 'Flight Without End,' one gets an accurate feeling of what it was like in post-World War I era Europe, and one may even glimpse the making of the disillusionment that ultimately made them fight another World War in the next decade.