Spring has sprung in Vienna, and a room becomes available to sublet in the home of the Jewish shoemaker Fischler. The new tenant is a shy, somewhat eccentric student from Galicia. His name is Joseph Roth.
Soon, he and Fanny, the family’s older daughter, get to know each other and a secret summer of love begins for the two. Yet it ends in separation – and, in historical terms, in a human catastrophe: the start of World War I.
The two do not see each other again for many years, until Fanny, after an adventurous escape from Vienna, ends up in Paris in 1938, where, by chance, she runs into her first summer crush at the German Relief Committee. By now, Roth has become a famous writer also living in exile in Paris, and his most recent lover, Irmgard Keun, has just fled from him. Fanny will stay with the choleric, charismatic author, who is at odds with himself and the world and holds court in his circle like a prince though he doesn’t have a penny left to his name, until shortly before his death.
