Initially we had planned two giveaways for  German Literature Month but now, thanks to the generosity of another editor, there is additional one today.

I’m particularly pleased as this gives me the opportunity to introduce archipelago books who are offering the title for this giveaway. Archipelago books have one of the most interesting catalogs of literature in translation I have seen so far. They offer great titles from all over the world.

I also really love their motto

a not-for-profit literary press dedicated to promoting cross-cultural exchange through international literature in translation

If you don’t know them yet it’s worth having a look at their site. Some of their books are prize winners, also in the category “Best translation”.

For German Literature Month I have the opportunity to give away one copy of one of the classics of Austrian literature, Joseph Roth’s Job.

Job is the tale of Mendel Singer, a pious, destitute Eastern-European Jew and children’s Torah teacher whose faith is tested at every turn. His youngest son seems to be incurably disabled, one of his older sons joins the Russian Army, the other deserts to America, and his daughter is running around with a Cossack. When he flees with his wife and daughter, further blows of fate await him. In this modern fable based on the biblical story of Job, Mendel Singer witnesses the collapse of his world, experiences unbearable suffering and loss, and ultimately gives up hope and curses God, only to be saved by a miraculous reversal of fortune.

As you can see, this is a novel that comes with high praise.

“A beautifully written, and in the end uplifting, parable for an era of upheaval . . . Job, opened to any page, offers something of beauty. . . Ross Benjamin’s excellent new translation gives us both the realism and the poetry.”
—The Quarterly Conversation

“The totality of Joseph Roth’s work is no less than a tragédie humaineachieved in the techniques of modern fiction.”
—Nadine Gordimer

“Joseph Roth was a permanent novelist. His Job was a worthy precursor of that masterpiece [The Radetzky March] . . . [Job is] both immensely sorrowful and finally strangely hopeful.”
—Harold Bloom

“Jobis more than a novel and legend, it is a pure, perfect poetic work, which is destined to outlast everything that we, his contemporaries, have created and written. In unity of construction, in depth of feeling, in purity, in the musicality of the language, it can scarcely be surpassed.”
—Stefan Zweig

“This life of an everyday man moves us as if someone had written of our lives, our longings, our struggles. Roth’s language has the discipline and rigor of German Classicism. A great and harrowing book that no one can resist.”
—Ernst Toller

“Job is perfect. . . . a novel as lyric poem.”
—Joan Acocella

The competition is US only. The winner will be announced on Monday October 22 2012.