Von Trotta Family

The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth's classic saga of the privileged von Trotta family, encompasses the entire social fabric of the Austro-Hungarian Empire just before World War I. The author's greatest achievement, The Radetzky March is an unparalleled portrait of a civilization in decline, and as such a universal story for our times.

The author's masterpiece, an epic saga of a family and an empire in decline, is "full of psychological penetration and tragic force" (The New Yorker). The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth's classic novel of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, follows three generations of the privileged von Trotta family as Europe advances inexorably toward World War I. With a breadth and richness that draws comparison to Tolstoy, it encompasses the entire social fabric of Austro-Hungarian society. Shot through with dark humor and tragic irony, The Radetzky March is an unparalleled portrait of a civilization in decline, and as such a universal story for our times. "A masterpiece . . . The totality of Joseph Roth's work is no less than a tragédie humaine achieved in the techniques of modern fiction. No other contemporary writer, not excepting Thomas Mann, has come close to achieving the wholeness . . . that Lukács cites as our impossible aim." -Nadine Gordimer

A continuation of the saga of the von Trotta family from The Radetzky March, it is both a powerful and moving look at a decaying society and its journey through the War and its devastating aftermath, and the story of the erosion of one man's desperate faith in the virtues of a simple life.

Translated from German, a novel portraying the post-WW1 decline of Viennese society from a "twentieth-century master of the quixotic and melancholy." (Publishers Weekly) The Emperor's Tomb – the last novel Joseph Roth wrote – is a haunting elegy to the vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Running from 1913 to 1938, from the eve of one world war to the eve of the next, the novel continues the saga of the von Trotta family from The Radetzky March. Roth tells of one man's foppish, sleepwalking, spoiled youth, and his struggle to come to terms with the uncongenial society of post-First World War Vienna, financial ruin, and the first intimations of Nazi barbarities. A powerful and moving look at a decaying society in the devastating aftermath of the Great War. "Sharply observed." -The Guardian