The Radetzky March

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 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 Austro-Hungarian Empire. Born into a Jewish family in Galicia, on the eastern edge of the empire, he was a prolific political journalist and novelist. On Hitler's assumption of power, he was obliged to leave Germany for Paris, where he died in poverty a few years later. His books include What I Saw, Job, The White Cities, The String of Pearls and The Radetzky March, all published by Granta Books. Michael Hofmann is the highly acclaimed translator of Joseph Roth, Wolfgang Koeppen, Kafka and Brecht, and the author of several books of poems and book of criticism. He has translated nine previous books by Joseph Roth. He teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Review :
One of the greatest novels ever written, Joseph Roth tells us who we are, and what we might yet become. Timeless, humane, tragic For sheer, epic sweep, I love reading The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, set in imperial Vienna. I can't recommend it highly enough Timeless... I re-read this book every two or three years, captivated anew by its low-key melancholia and its wry take on the human predicament Roth weds epic sweep and scope to irony, pathos and keen wit, sustained across glorious set-pieces... Michael Hofmann's dazzling translations have secured a place for Roth, that peerless celebrant and satirist of the dying Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the affections of an army of Anglophone readers A heartfelt evocation of an Empire in which he discernedvirtues that outweighed all the burdens of a mindless officialdom... Roth's masterpiece is of such enormous relevance to our times that we must be grateful that it has found in Michael Hofmann, a translator who does justice to its understated grief 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 One of the great novels of the last century. Its theme, beautifully articulated, is the end of an era. Roth's anthem for a vanished world has the intense, fleeting beauty of a sunset Michael Hofmann has rendered us a service by bringing us a fresh and lively translation of a 20th Century masterpiece 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. A great, wise, droll, novel Remarkable... Elegantly told and rich in social history