Joseph Roth was born in the small city of Brody in 1894, which at that time belonged to the Austrian-Hungarian empire. A couple of years ago I visited Brody since I admire most of Joseph Roth’s work.

The Brody of 2008 turned out to be a sleepy town with a Jewish cemetery in decay.

Whenever I’m asked the question “Where do you want to be buried?” Brody comes to mind. It’s a strange question, and I have no intention of dying soon, but if you travel enough apparently people are doubtful whether you will ever be able to find rest.

Recently a Dutch magazine on translating literature asked me to pick the best translation, not the best recently translated novel, but the best translation. This is a thorny issue. The novel might be mediocre; the translation can be superb.

Without much hesitation I chose Joseph Roth’s novel Rebellion. The English translation is by Michael Hofmann. I chose the book not so much because I was in awe with the Dutch translation—the translation is pretty good but I’m not an expert on that matter—but because Rebellion is the quintessential novel to me.

A man, Andreas Pum, comes back from the war, “He had lost a leg and been given a medal.” As a war veteran, he is allowed to play the barrel organ on the streets. Pum believes in God, the Emperor and his Fatherland, and to him there is no great distinction between the three of them.

He falls in love with a widow and they get married. Love is too big of a word for this marriage of convenience. The widow needs a man, and she believes that a man with just one leg won’t give her too much trouble.

After the wedding, Pum’s fortune changes, and slowly but steadily the state crushes the war veteran.

When the English translation came out, Richard Bernstein wrote in the New York Times that Rebellion was written during Joseph Roth’s leftist period.

I’m not sure what’s leftist about this novel. That the state is often indifferent towards its citizens, and that its civil servants are hardworking people sometimes blinded by the rules—these are hardly leftist observations.

Jason Epstein writes in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books that somewhere in the ’80s “Books became fast-moving items with mass appeal.”

I immediately thought of Andreas Pum who got crushed himself, you could say, by fast-moving items.

I was rereading the novel while traveling. When I felt that injustice was done to me at a security checkpoint at an airport, I overcame the urge to shout. I thought of Andreas Pum: losing your temper will be the beginning of the end.

So I smiled sheepishly instead.

Andreas Pum is always present.