Pictures I took during the visit to the Mostyska Jewish burial ground I describe in this @LRB Diary piece

Tomorrow I’m interviewing Manya Wilkinson, author of LUBLIN, one of the funniest, sharpest novels I’ve read in ages. We’ll discuss how to write Holocaust fiction, her writing craft & Yiddish jokes, lots of ’em. If you’re in London, be a mensch & join us. https://t.co/vRNyPaopdQ

I’m delighted to be a judge for the @Wingateprize and our shortlist is out today! Six wonderful books, novels and non-fiction, from Holocaust memoir to romantic comedy, each superb in its own way. The winner will be announced at Jewish Book Week in March.

A deal like this won't last long - buy the "Endless Flight" audiobook today and save 50%! @KeironPim

The longlist for the fantastic Wingate Literary Prize @Wingateprize is out! With seven novels and seven non-fiction titles, the quality and breadth of the works are truly exciting. Explore the full list here: https://t.co/b1KxifCLSI

We’re very pleased to reveal the 2025 Wingate Literary Prize longlist. Comprised of seven novels and seven non-fiction titles, they cover a broad spectrum of opinions, style and content, interrogating what it means to be Jewish in multiple ways.

Norwich Waterstones’ main recommendation in their display window at the moment. Nice to see them championing such a deserving writer. And ‘honest’… really? Really?

I’m so pleased to be one of the judges for this year’s Wingate Prize. We’ve read some excellent books already and I’m looking forward to reading the rest before taking on the tough task of choosing our longlist!

A useful tidbit to include in obituaries for Nasrallah is that he said God created Israel so the Jews would be gathered in one place to "save you from having to go to the ends of the world" to kill them, and spent his life pursuing that goal with the world's most potent militia.

The former Hotel Eden in Amsterdam, where Roth lived in 1936 and which he describes in Confession of a Murderer — and me and the ever-generous and kind Roth scholar @ilsejosepha locating it earlier that day!

The beautiful little Chapelle de Sainte-Marie des Batignolles, in Paris, which features in Roth’s wonderful late novella The Legend of the Holy Drinker.

The extraordinary Capuchin Crypt in Vienna, last resting place of generations of Habsburgs, including Emperor Franz Josef I.

Ostend, the Belgian coastal city where he spent the summer of 1936. This seafront restaurant is on the site of the former Hotel Helvetia, where Roth and Zweig were photographed together.

The former premises of Roth’s publisher in Amsterdam, where he gave a lecture in 1936 (after briefly fleeing the building, aghast that the organisers hadn’t honoured his request for a carafe of schnapps on the lectern).

The Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris, near the hotels on the Rue de Tournon where Roth lived from the mid-Twenties until his death in 1939.

More to come tomorrow.

And this is the best view I could get of the most unsettling building I visited: Friedl’s block, now boarded-up and seemingly abandoned, at the Steinhof psychiatric hospital, Vienna.

This is the front door of the apartment block in Leopoldstadt, Vienna, where Friedl Reichler grew up and lived until she married Roth. It’s almost opposite where my grandmother, Ilse Epstein, lived at the same time; I’m always fascinated by the possibility they knew each other.

This is the bar at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, where Roth drank with friends including Stefan Zweig. (I’m afraid I didn’t offer to settle his bills.)

In honour of Roth’s birthday, here’s a thread of photos I couldn’t include in the book — starting with one of my favourite places I visited during my research, Cafe Reynders, where he spent many of his nights in Amsterdam.

Raising a glass this evening to Joseph Roth, born on this day 130 years ago in Brody, in what’s now Ukraine. Thank you, Herr Roth, for being the most engrossing, stimulating, sometimes infuriating but always intriguing biographical subject I could ever wish to study.