“Please allow me to invite you. I don’t have the means for a proper dinner. But I could treat you to a glass of rosé and a slice of pizza. Come sit with me! What would you rather see? How they bake pizza on the open fire? Then sit right next to me. The old port? Then you should sit opposite me instead. From here you’ll be able to see the sun go down behind […]
In this age of digital nomadism, we often forget how intense and ambiguous the relationships can be that humans entertain with geographic places. Some places attract us, others reject us. Some entice us, others bore us to death. Some places poison us, others intoxicate us only to eat us alive. In the same way as places are haunted by people and their afterlife specters, places can haunt us in return. They lure us to always […]
“Please, save me, believe in me, in my sanity!” Stranded in Marseille, in the heat of July 1934, Joseph Roth sent out a cry for help to his friend and benefactor Stefan Zweig. What was the matter?
When I visited Marseille for the first time, I already knew that some of my favorite authors had been here before me. The writer and journalist Joseph Roth, for instance. I had a vague notion of him sitting in the lobby of some grand hotel by the Old Port writing his articles for the Frankfurter Zeitung. Or did he actually come to Marseille seeking shelter from the Nazis, to be right at the port and […]