Right and Left and the Legend of the Holy Drinker

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With tragic foresight, Right and Left, first published in 1929, evokes the nightlife, corruption, political unrest, and economic tyranny of Berlin in the twenties, the same territory covered trenchantly in Roth’s reportage, recently published as What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-33. After serving in World War I, Paul Bernheim returns to Berlin to find himself heir to his recently deceased father’s banking empire. Increasingly beset by skyrocketing inflation, and dismayed by his brother’s infatuation with the brownshirts; Bernheim turns to an outsider for help—a profiteering Russian émigré whose advice proves alternately advantageous and disastrous. Too late to change his fate, he realizes he has been deceived by a master in the craft of manipulation.