The Radetzky March (Works of Joseph Roth)

The definitive saga of the Habsburg Empire―named one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

This is a high-quality edition featuring an introduction from Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer and translated by the acclaimed Joachim Neugroschel, who was the winner of three PEN Translation Awards.

In the heat of the Battle of Solferino, a young infantry lieutenant saves the life of Emperor Franz Joseph I. This single act of instinctive bravery ennobles the Trotta family, lifting them from their humble Slovenian roots into the gilded, precarious heart of the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy.

The Radetzky March follows three generations of the Von Trotta family as they navigate the slow, majestic decay of an empire that once seemed eternal. From the rigid honor codes of provincial military outposts to the decadent, champagne-soaked gambling dens of Vienna, Roth paints a panoramic portrait of a civilization standing on the precipice of the Great War.

Through the eyes of the restless Carl Joseph von Trotta―a man crushed by the weight of his grandfather's heroism―we witness the erosion of duty, the heartbreak of forbidden love, and the haunting realization that the music of the empire is playing its final notes.

A masterpiece of European literature, Joseph Roth’s most famous work is a lyrical, deeply moving farewell to a world of order, grace, and tragic illusions. This edition features the definitive translation, preserving the "crystalline and melancholic" prose that has earned Roth comparisons to Tolstoy and Flaubert.

“Epic . . . brilliantly achieved.” (New York Times Book Review)

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.