The Radetzky March - Softcover

Joseph Roth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847086144 ISBN 13: 9781847086143

Publisher: Granta Publications Ltd, 2013

Synopsis

The Radetzky March is a meditation on the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the prism of three generations of the Trotta family. The novel opens in 1859 at the Battle of Solferino, when the young Lieutenant Trotta saves the life of the Emperor and is ennobled. He owes the Empire everything, and his son also becomes a conscientious servant of the great multinational state even as it enters into its period of chaos, with competing nationalisms and ideologies tearing it apart. The final generation of Trottas cannot comprehend or survive the collapse of the Empire, which no longer has any purchase on reality. Beginning at the moment when the Habsburg dominions began to crumble, and ending at the moment when the old Emperor's body is finally entombed in the vault of Capuchins in Vienna, the narrative arc of Roth's novel is perfectly judged. However, it is Roth's intelligent compassion and ironic sense of history that confer on The Radetzky March its greatness.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was the great elegist of the cosmopolitan, tolerant and doomed Central European culture that flourished in the dying days of the Austrian Empire. He wrote thirteen novels, including The Radetzky March and The String of Pearls.

Review

'The Radetzky March can fairly claim to be one of the great novels of the last century. Its theme, beautifully articulated, is the end of an era. His anthem for a vanished world has the intense, fleeting beauty of a sunset' Sunday Telegraph 'Over recent years, the poet Michael Hofmann's glittering translations of Joseph Roth have single-handedly given a vanished voice fresh resonance in the English-speaking world. Now Hofmann has surpassed himself with the jewel in Roth's crown. The Radetzky March is a majestically assured and engaging novel' Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'He saw, he listened, he understood. The Radetzky March is a dark, disturbing novel of eccentric beauty... If you have yet to experience Roth, begin here, and then read everything' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times 'The true reading pleasure afforded by the rich environment Roth captures may well have increased over time, while the schisms at the heart of Europe continue to fascinate. It seems that we are rediscovering in twentieth-century Central European literature classics for a new millennium' Time Out

Edition details

• Publisher: Granta Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847086144
• ISBN 13: 9781847086143
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 320