The Antichrist

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The Antichrist (German: Der Antichrist) is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1895. Although it was written in 1888, its content made Franz Overbeck and Heinrich Köselitz delay its publication, along with Ecce Homo. The German title can be translated into English as either The Anti-Christ or The Anti-Christian, depending on how the German word Christ is translated.Nietzsche claims in the preface to have written the book for a very limited readership. To understand the book, he asserts that the reader “must be honest in intellectual matters to the point of hardness to so much as endure my seriousness, my passion.” The reader should be above politics and nationalism. Also, the usefulness or harmfulness of truth should not be a concern.

Long out of print in English, this dizzying novel, essay, and polemic has less to do with religion than with what Roth sees as the disintegrating moral fabric of the modern world. Written while Roth was in exile from Germany and his native Austria following the rise of Nazism, this work composed in cafés across free Europe after all his works in German went up in flames. Such events no doubt influence the apocalytic tones of *The Antichrist’* s protaganist, J.R., a journalist hired by an inscrutable media mogul hellbent on exposing evidence of the “Antichrist” throughout the world. This mission leads J.R. to authoritarian political regimes such as Red Earth (the Soviet Union) but also other poisonous terrains like The Land of Shadows (Hollywood) it becomes all too clear that it is Roth’s mission to chart the whole of civilization’s slide into moral and political chaos. But herein lies the extraordinary strength and appeal of this work, as Roth is powerfully and even hilariously prescient. Mixing the diatribe with his trademark sardonic wit, he miraculously predicts the advent of the Holocaust, globalization, multimedia, even the paparazzi. Combining beautiful but savage writing with visual imagery out of a Coen Brothers movie, this is an invaluable addition to the Roth canon in English.

Book Author:

Joseph Roth

Publisher:

Peter Owen Publishers

Publication Date:

1934

ISBN-13:

9780720614046

Format:

Nook, iPhone/iPad, Mac, Windows

Language:

English

Pages:

264

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