A short novel from the 1920s about Franz Tunda, an Austrian officer taken prisoner in Russia during the First World War. Released amid the chaos of the revolution, he finds himself unable to go home and wanders through Russia, Germany and France, taking up one role after another. Drifting between countries and ideas, he never finds a place to belong. Roth's spare, observant account of postwar rootlessness reads like a reporter's notebook and a quiet lament.