The Radetzky March
Language: English
Published by Penguin Books Ltd (UK), 2016
- Softcover
- New
Condition: New
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NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 'Sublime. it inspires a kind of evangelical cult passion among its devotees' Simon Schama 'Roth is Austria's Chekhov' William Boyd Strauss's Radetzky March, signature tune of one of Europe's most powerful regimes, presides over Joseph Roth's account of three generations of the Trotta family in the years preceding the Austro-Hungarian collapse in 1918. Grandfather, son and grandson are equally dependent on the empire: the first for his enoblement; the second for the civil virtues that make him a meticulous servant of an administration whose failure he can neither comprehend nor survive; the third for the family standards of conduct which he cannot attain but against which he is too enfeebled to rebel. Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 274.
Seller Inventory # IB-545532
- Title
- The Radetzky March
- Author
- Joseph Roth
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd (UK)
- Publication year
- 2016
- Condition
- Neu
- Binding
- Softcover/Taschenbuch
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0141393424
- ISBN 13
- 9780141393421
- Item weight
- 274 grams
NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015
''Sublime ... it inspires a kind of evangelical cult passion among its devotees'' Simon Schama
''Roth is Austria''s Chekhov'' William Boyd
Strauss''s Radetzky March, signature tune of one of Europe''s most powerful regimes, presides over Joseph Roth''s account of three generations of the Trotta family in the years preceding the Austro-Hungarian collapse in 1918. Grandfather, son and grandson are equally dependent on the empire: the first for his enoblement; the second for the civil virtues that make him a meticulous servant of an administration whose failure he can neither comprehend nor survive; the third for the family standards of conduct which he cannot attain but against which he is too enfeebled to rebel.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
He had been driven from the paradise of simple faith in Emperor and Virtue, Truth, and Justice, and, now fettered in silence and endurance, he may have realized that the stability of the world, the power of laws, and the glory of majesties were all based on deviousness.As World War I approaches and the monarchy's limitations become apparent, Trotta's son and grandson become even further removed from this paradise. They continue to follow the codes of honor and duty, though such behavioral guides become pointless, even burdensome, in a world shorn of simple faith in an emperor. Trotta's grandson Carl Joseph finds his military career overwhelmed by bad horsemanship, alcohol dependency, frivolous roulette and baccarat debts, and misguided love affairs--the kinds of flaws, he thinks, that are inevitable without the self-assurance and practical knowledge that he would have gained had he earned (rather than inherited) his position. Not long ago, he thinks wistfully, his family lived as peasants "in dwarfed huts, making their wives fertile by night and their fields by day." It is here that the Trottas' demise is at its most poignant, as the focus of the narrative shifts from the loss of status to the far more devastating loss of purpose.
In both style and temperament, Roth's novel stands between the 19th and 20th centuries, and the three Trottas could be seen as part of a progression that stretches back to Tolstoy's Prince Andrei and looks ahead to the Mathieu of Sartre's Les Chemins de la Liberté trilogy. Although The Radetzky March illustrates why the monarchy was doomed, and isn't blind to the new nations and ideologies on the horizon, Roth is more interested in his characters' psychology than their politics. And their central difficulty--the bewildering meaninglessness that follows the dissolution of an ideal--has been a fundamental 20th-century dilemma. The Trottas are, in Roth's stunning phrase, "homesick for the Kaiser." One need only substitute "the Chairman" or "Marxism" or "God" to understand the novel's lasting resonance. --John Ponyicsanyi
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