After Hitler came to power in 1933, celebrated Austrian – and Jewish – writers Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig were forced to flee; Roth that very day, boarding a train to Paris. The pair enjoyed a peculiar friendship; in exile, the penniless but, in his own estimation, more talented Roth depended on the commercially successful Zweig for money. By 1942 they were both dead, Zweig by suicide, Roth from alcohol poisoning. Endless Flight author Keiron Pim and National Library of Israel curator Stefan Litt discuss their lives and works with writer and critic Boyd Tonkin.

In partnership with the National Library of Israel.

Keiron Pim is the author of Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth and Jumpin’ Jack Flash: David Litvinoff and the Rock’n’Roll Underworld which was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn prize. As well as writing books and articles, Pim is a proofreader, editor and teacher of creative nonfiction. He lives in Norwich.

Stefan Litt is an archival expert at the National Library of Israel, where he is in charge of European language holdings, featuring authors such as Martin Buber, Stefan Zweig, Franz Kafka, and others. He received his PhD in Pre-Modern Jewish History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2001), and a post-doctoral degree (habilitation) from Graz University Austria (2008). He did research and was visiting professor at the universities of Erfurt and Duesseldorf in Germany, Graz in Austria, as well as Jerusalem and Bar-Ilan in Israel. He has published on the history of early modern European Jewry and on Jewish archival collections.

Boyd Tonkin was awarded the Royal Society of Literature’s Benson Medal in 2020 for outstanding service to literature. Formerly Literary Editor and Senior Writer at The Independent, he currently writes on books and arts for international media including The Economist, The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Times Literary Supplement. He chaired the Man Booker International Prize 2016 and then served as the prize’s Special Adviser. His reader’s guide to global fiction, The 100 Best Novels in Translation, is published by Galileo.