From an article written by Joseph Roth for the newspaper Neue Berliner Zeitung in 1921 and included in The Hotel Years, a collection of Roth’s journalism out last month from New Directions. Roth (1894–1939) was the author of The Radetzky March and other novels. Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann.

It was raining the day before yesterday. The asphalt of the Kurfürstendamm was slippery, and a woman with an open umbrella ran into a moving car, slipped, and was run over. Her umbrella was lying on the pavement. People rushed over, the woman was picked up; she was…