Bibliograph

The Radetzky march, Joseph Roth ; translated from the German by Joachim Neugroschel ; with an introduction by Alan Bance

Type

Label

The Radetzky march, Joseph Roth ; translated from the German by Joachim Neugroschel ; with an introduction by Alan Bance

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (page xxxi)

Index

no index present

Literary Form

fiction

Main title

The Radetzky march

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

34745994

Responsibility statement

Joseph Roth ; translated from the German by Joachim Neugroschel ; with an introduction by Alan Bance

Series statement

Everyman's library, 197

Summary

In the heat of battle at Solferino, a young lieutenant named Trotta saves the life of the next-to-last Hapsburg Emperor, Francis Joseph, thereby securing for himself, his son, and his grandson, the ambiguous blessing of imperial favor. From the one event, Joseph Roth teases out the entire social fabric of the Austro-Hungarian empire during its last decades, before the First World War. It is hard to know what to praise most in this atmospheric, perfectly controlled masterwork: the brilliant characterizations, handled with a deftness and economy that leave even minor figures rounded and fully formed before our eyes; the seamless blending of the historic and the personal; or the retrospective storytelling, in which the cataclysm of the coming war is meticulously foreshadowed in the tragic fate of the Trottas. The Radetzky March is an unexampled portrait of a civilization in decline, and as such a universal story for our times

Classification