Austrian writer Joseph Roth (1894–1939) is one of the most significant literary masters of the 20th century. After the First World War he lived in Germany and was a journalist. His first novels, The Savoy Hotel, Mutiny, and Zipper and His Father, brought him fame. The novel “Radetzky's March” remains especially popular to this day. Roth despised fascism, constantly spoke out in print against the Nazis, and in 1933 he had to leave Germany. The writer died in Paris. The novel “Tarabas”, translated into Russian for the first time, tells in its own way the story of the biblical prodigal son, which the writer transferred to the years after the First World War. Its main theme is sin and redemption.