the autobiography of albert einstein

Gerhard Roth’s first “novel,” originally published in 1972, is a triumphant refutation of the death of modernism: a lucid, morbid and impossible account of what cannot be said, a deranged existence pieced together, an individual at total odds not only with the world and its structures, but with the chemical and biological basis of his own thought.

Gerhard Roth, born in 1942 in Graz, Austria, is perhaps the most important writer to emerge from that “hot-bed of geniuses,” the Forum Stadtpark, which has radically influenced German letters in the last two decades. His broad range of works, from experimental novels to plays and a children’s book, has earned him a number of major prizes, and several of his books have been filmed. An uncomfortable writer whose work revolves around extreme mental states and behaviour.