The Emperor's Tomb

The haunting sequel to the masterpiece The Radetzky March.

As the sun sets on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, young Franz Ferdinand Trotta―cousin to the hero of The Radetzky March―finds himself adrift in a world of aristocratic ease and bohemian decadence. But the year is 1913, and the grand tapestry of Imperial Vienna is about to be torn asunder.

From the smoke-filled cafes of a dying capital to the brutal frozen wastes of a Siberian POW camp, Trotta’s journey mirrors the collapse of a civilization. Returning to a Vienna he no longer recognizes―a city of breadlines, fractured identities, and rising shadows―he must confront the ultimate erosion of his class and his country.

Written in 1938 as the Nazi "Anschluss" loomed, Joseph Roth’s final novel is a devastatingly beautiful elegy for a vanished world. It is a story of loyalty, displacement, and the heartbreaking search for a home that no longer exists. This edition preserves the celebrated John Hoare translation, capturing the "eerie, clairvoyant" prose of one of the 20th century’s greatest writers.

“Roth details without pity the inner life of the authentic self.” ―New York Times

Joseph Roth (1894–1939) was one of the most brilliant and prolific writers of the 20th century. Born into a Jewish family in Brody, on the eastern fringes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Roth’s life and work were defined by the tension between his provincial roots and the cosmopolitan centers of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris.

A legendary journalist who was once the highest-paid writer in Germany, Roth is best known for his monumental family saga, The Radetzky March, and his prophetic final novel, The Emperor’s Tomb. His writing―described by the Los Angeles Times as "shattering in its simplicity"―expertly captures the displacement of the "homeless wanderer" in the wake of the Great War.

Forced into exile in 1933 following the rise of the Nazi party, Roth spent his final years in Paris, writing feverishly while struggling with alcoholism and poverty. He died in 1939, just months before the outbreak of World War II, leaving behind a body of work that serves as a haunting, lyrical epitaph for the lost world of Central Europe.