The Radetzky March

Once upon a time there was a country called Kakania. It was also known as the Habsburg double monarchy on the Danube, under the Kaiser of Austria and King of Hungary. It was one of the powers in Europe for a while, after it emerged from the Napoleonic troubles as a temporary winner. When that while was over, its territory became split and segmented and re-arranged and re-structured and unified and separated, over decades, like few other territories in the world.

One of the men in the novel, a Polish count and political insider plus enfant terrible, makes this prediction: this country will collapse into 100 pieces, all the peoples will have their own little states, and even the Jews will proclaim a King of Palestine. (The prophecy value of this piece of wisdom is somewhat diminished by the fact, that the book was published in 1932, so that half of it had already had the opportunity to happen in real life. In the novel, he says this a few months before the murder of Sarajewo, so it does seem to make some sense as a prophecy.)

The count's explanation for the collapse: God has deserted the Kaiser. That seems to be as good and rational a metaphor as any other that I have seen.
And: the peoples have stopped going to their various churches and go to their nationalist clubs now. That's a thought that Mr.Wilson and the Versailles conference picked up on successfully, when they promoted their peace to end all wars.

Many of Europe's now independent countries were formerly parts or provinces of Kakania. The central character of `Radetzkymarsch' is a family, or rather its men. It starts with a farmer's son, who became a lieutenant in the Kaiser's service and happened to save the majesty's life in the battle of Solferino (an important event also in the history of the Red Cross) in 1859. The young man was from Slovenia. He became decorated and ennobled and promoted and de-rooted, and ended up as a bitter retired officer in Moravia.

He had had enough of the military and refused to let his only son take the same career. The son became a civil servant, hardly less bitter and lonely than his father. The grandson, then, is taking most of the space in the novel, which is sold by publishers as the `rise and fall' of a family. What nonsense, there is no `rise of a family', just an ill considered elevation of an individual.

The grandson is allowed to enter the military again, like his grandfather, another step in the story of inadequacies. We suffer through family helplessness, through stilted table conversations full of pre-formed phrases, the inability of fathers to relate to their sons, through unbelievable depths of lacking social intelligence. The grandson suffers from all kind of inabilities, all related to his futile senseless life in a sterile world. He can't do what he should do as an officer, and he can't stay away from things that he should stay away from. His first posting is with the cavallery, and he needs to sit on horses, but he can't ride. He is an outsider in his barracks, as uncomfortable with his men as with his brother officers. His inadequacies lead to transfers, and things change, but remain the same. He changes to infantry on the Russian border, in a Polish/Ukrainian region. War is coming, but only we, the readers, are told so. At least for some time. Eventually the secret must out, though.

The country collapsed in ossification, in inability to adjust to modernization, to industry, electricity, labor conflicts, separatism. The equivalent on the individual level, for the officers in the world of the novel, is alcohol, gambling, debts, women trouble, duels about `honor'...

Why do reviewers and other commentators keep repeating that the novel is about K&K nostalgia? That is so far from the truth. There is no nostalgia for great times, only insight in bitter difficulties of the multi-ethnic authoritarian, but incompetent state. If any nostalgia can be found in these pages at all, then for times before the `glory' of the family, for the simplicity of a poor farmer's life in Slovenia, for an imagined innocent time.

The title hero, Strauss' march for General Radetzky, serves as an imaginary jingle for the novel. Imagine it played nearly everywhere, during Sunday park concerts, in army orchestra performances, on the bordello's piano...

The Radetzky March (Works of Joseph Roth)
The Radetsky March

The Radetsky March

"All historic events", said the lawyer, "are rewritten for school use. And to my mind that is proper. Children need examples they can grasp, that sink in. They can find out the real truth later on."

The young infantryman who had saved the life of the Emperor at the Battle of Solferino was reading about the incident in one of his son's history books. He became enraged because of the factual inaccuracies of the account...that he was in the Cavalry, not the Infantry, and took his complaint through the chain of command all the way up to Franz Joseph.
The Emperor sided with the Lawyer..." People tell a lot of lies," he said.
But for his superior service Carl Joseph became Baron Carl Joseph Trotta and the Kaiser supplied ample funds for the education of his son. And so Baron Trotta became a member of the nobility, with whom he felt no connection whatsoever. Thus begins Joseph Roth's "The Radetsky March," a remarkable story of a dynasty, albeit a minor one, at the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Joseph Roth was an Austrian-Jewish journalist who witnessed the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the growth of anti-Semitism and fascism after World War I. (Not only is Roth not widely known, he is often confused with Philip Roth, as my librarian did when I asked for one of Joseph Roth's books and she handed me "Portnoy's Complaint.")
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"The Radetsky March" is a musical composition which, like a leitmotif, recurs throughout the book. The conductor insists on his musicians sight-reading it rather than playing it from memory... one of the many perverse rules and regulations that are symbolically destroying the Empire.
From my reading of the many reviews and comments about this book, it's safe to say it is not a piece of "nostalgia" about the way life was, but a realistic depiction of the way things were (and how ineptitude and inflexibility kept them from getting any better).

None of the characters really relates to any of the others... they are like pieces on a chess board, moving to a complex set of rules and policy.
Carl Joseph III is fated to join the military, just like his grandfather, whose portrait he stares at every time he comes home from military academy,.
"The grandson's mute conversation with the grandfather took place every summer. The dead man revealed nothing; the boy learned nothing.He felt as if he was his grandfather's grandson, not his father's son."
His father grills him on his studies and rebukes him when he can't properly define "subordination." So much for father/son communication.
Class distinctions based on genealogy and geography are everything:
Carl Joseph looks at the Slav soldiers , young, ignorant and naïve and are from the other half of the Dual Empire and exclaims; " They were peasants. Peasants! And the Trotta dynasty had lived no differently! No differently!"

A ubiquitous symbol of the Empire is the Kaiser's picture, which hangs in every schoolroom, public building, and office. " The painting seemed to be hanging very far away, farther than the wall. Carl Joseph remembered that djring his first few days in the regiment that portrait had offered him a certain proud comfort. ...but gradually the Supreme Commander in Chief developed the indifferent, habitual, and unheeded countenance shown on his stamps and coins. His picture hung on the wall of the club, a strange kind of sacrifice that a god makes to himself." By the next year, the Emperor's portrait had been relegated to the kitchen, fly-blown and surrounded by pots and pans.
The Moral is: Empires aren't conquered; they collapse, bloated and morbidly obese, comatose, paralyzed with bureaucracy and obsessed with form over function.
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An alcoholic, Roth died destitute and forgotten in Paris in 1939 at the age of 45.

*****

I really admire the craftsmanship manifest in the disciplined writing of Roth in this work. The writing is vivid and each sentence is densely packed with focused editing so that the narrative reads much as a military march by, say, Sousa would play. The story concerns three generations of military men rebelling against a mediocre fate, beginning with heroism at the Battle of Solferino and culminating in the final days of the great Hapsburg Empire. The novel is about the relationship of these military men to their emperor. "The Emperor was an old man. He was the oldest emperor in the world. Around him, drawing closer and closer, death reaped and reaped. The whole field lay bare. Only the Emperor, like a forgotten silver wheat stalk, stood waiting... He saw the sun setting on his empire, but he said nothing, he knew he would die before its downfall." The novel starts with an act of epic heroism and ends in an act of disgrace. This is a novel about the eternal cycle of the rise and fall of human affairs and empires. "Bridges," said Frau von Tessig, "I'm always so afraid they'll collapse." Sooner or later the bridges do wither, even among the greatest empires -- Greece, Rome, Britain and Austria-Hungary at the turn of the 20th century. The protagonists wonder about their belonging: "He became convinced that he did not belong here. But if not here, where?... To the fathers of my fathers? Ought I be holding a plow and not a sword?" The music of the Radetzky March plays on - a tune to which three generations of military men marched in service to one of the world's great emperors. Who marches to that tune now in service to the long departed emperor?

Critics seem to have taken Joseph Roth's portrayal of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the brink of its collapse as nostalgic. In his introduction to this translation, Alan Bance speaks of Roth's "undeniable tendency to idealize the past." I beg to differ. My reading of "The Radetsky March" is not an elegy, in the sense of praise for the dead -not for the dead Hero of Solferino, not for the Emperor he saved from a foolish death, and certainly not for the wounded Leviathan of Empire. The sigh of relief that the reader hears from most of the minor characters at the end of the novel - from the aristocrat Chojnicki to the peasant Onufrij - expresses the dominant sense that the burden of repression which the Empire laid on its peoples was never as tolerable as everyone pretended. Rather, it was an Empire of false ideals and false idols. Loyalty was corrupt, honor indistinguishable from folly. Yes, every belt was buckled and every fork was polished daily, but what of real value did such punctiliousness represent? All hollow formalism, and the hollowest of all was the Kaiser himself, Franz Joseph, first shown to us as a smug peacock, later as a confused relic of his own personal insignificance, musing about his impotence while still practicing his arbitrary absolutism. Underlying the Empire is a structure of ethnic hierarchy, with the Germans and the 'honorary' Germans at the top, and the bizarre red-bearded borderland Jews at the bottom. All order depends on the willing acknowledgement of this hierarchy, yet each component seethes with resentment, making unity no deeper than the gloss on a man's boots. Likewise, society depends on the hierarchic 'satisfaction' with social class boundaries - the faithful servant and the responsible master - yet on both sides of the boundary, humanity is stunted. The masters feel their own inadequacy in the eyes of their servants, and the servants gauge their own mean condition by the emptiness of their masters' lives. The Radetsky March is a processional of gaudy futility.

The novel begins at the Battle of Solferino in 1859, when a Slovene soldier, barely elevated from the peasantry, saves the life of the young Emperor Franz Joseph. It ends at the beginning of World War 1, with the almost simultaneous deaths of the hero's son and grandson and the senile Hapsburg ruler. Another secondary character, Doctor Skowronneck, has the last word; speaking of the dead, he says "I don't think either of them could have outlived Austria." His insight, if I understand him correctly, as that the hollow power of the empire and the hollow virtues of its upholders were inseparable.

Perhaps the most constant personage in this novel of three generations is an icon, and I mean "icon" in its orthodox religious sense. The icon is a portrait of grandfather Trotta, the Hero of Solferino, painted by the school friend of the second generation Trotta, the civil servant. The painter is another sort of self-shaping failure, re-encountered as a street artist by Trotta II with his cadet son, thereafter a shadowy presence likely to cadge money and croak a profundity at random moments. Trotta III, the lieutenant grandson of the Hero, in fact knows the Hero only from his portrait, which haunts his reveries and chides his shortcomings at every turn. Just as the Hero's portrait resembles the universal state portrait of the Kaiser, found in every barracks and every taproom in the Empire, so Trotta II, the bureaucrat, resembles his iconic ruler more and more as he ages, until they metaphorically fuse at death. Death also quicksteps to the Radetzky March in every major phase of the narrative, and it's clear that the face in the portrait is indeed the face of Death. One after another, characters aware of their impending death request two things, Last Rites of the Church and a last look at the portrait of the Hero. Empty faith, empty idolatry!

Published in 1932, The Radetsky March seems to me to be the last great novel of the Nineteenth Century. It's a far more profound 'novel of generations' than Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. Or I can equally perceive it as a modernist experiment, in which the challenge to the reader is not stylistic but empathetic. Certainly the style is adamantly classical, devoted to writing with near perfection, word by word, rather than to novelty. And it's written with breathtaking beauty of language. Metaphors are few but invariably crisp. Sentences are as disciplined as the shrubs in the gardens of Schoenbrunn. The language always fits the character whose point of view is exposed. I haven't read this novel in German, but I can't imagine that this translation is far inferior; few native Anglophones write English as fresh as Joachim Neugroschel's version of Joseph Roth.

The Radetzky March is Joseph Roth's brilliant tale of the declining years of the Austro-Hungarian or more accurately the Hapsburg Empire as told through the fortunes and misfortunes of three generations of the Von Trotta family. The book opens in 1859 with young Lt. Joseph Trotta saving the life of the also young emperor Franz Joseph at the Battle of Solferino. That deed earned the `von' for Baron and began a connection between the Von Trotta's and the emperor that was intermittently called upon when the family's fortunes suffered. The book ends with the outbreak of World War I.

In addition to the slow motion disintegration of the Empire, the book focuses on the relations between successive generations of father and son. Strict notions of honor and duty figure in their thinking above all other considerations. The third generation Von Trotta, Carl Joseph leads a foolish and dissolute life, but still clings to honor and duty above all else. The decline in the family's fortunes traces the decline in the Empire.

A New York Review of Books piece by J.M. Coetzee called Roth the `emperor of nostalgia', a phrase which summarizes my own sentiments (the article is freely available on the Internet). While the writing is excellent, at the end of the day the book is simply an examination of a mostly forgotten time and place. An enjoyable read, yes, but do not look for lasting or universal insights. (The Radetzky March was recommended by fellow the storeians and I enjoyed the book and appreciate the recommendation.) If an extraordinarily well-written period piece on the decline of Hapsburg Empire meets your fancy, then you must not miss The Radetzky March.

This is a masterpiece to be savored, celebrated, and shared. Straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, The Radetzky March uniquely combines the color, pomp, pageantry, and military maneuvering of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with the more modern political and psychological insights of the twentieth century, giving this short book a panoramic geographical and historical scope with fully rounded characters you can truly feel for.
Atmospheric effects are so rich and details are so carefully selected that you can hear the clopping of hooves, rattling of carriage wheels, clang of sabers, and percussion of rifles. Parallels between the actions of man and actions of Nature, along with seasonal cycles, bird imagery, and farm activity, permeate the book, grounding it and connecting the author's view of empire to the reality of the land. Loyalty, patriotism, and family honor are guiding principles here, even when these values impel the characters to extreme and sometimes senseless actions, as seen in a duel.
Significantly, there are no birth scenes here, only extremely touching scenes of aging and death, adding further poignancy to the decline and fall of the empire itself. And just as Trotta, in the end, has the little canary brought in to him, commenting that "it will outlive us all," perhaps this novel, too, will someday emerge from its obscurity and live as the classic it deserves to be.

"The Radetzky March," first published in 1932, is a tragicomic elegy for the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs, as seen through the eyes of three generations of a family caught up in that empire's inexorable decline. From Baron Joseph von Trotta--a simple peasant soldier ennobled after saving Emperor Franz Joseph's life at the Battle of Solferino--the Trotta family's torch passes to son Franz, a dignified, meticulous, unimaginative regional official, and finally to grandson Carl Joseph, a decent, weak-willed young army lieutenant totally unsuited to the life he was forced into. Carl Joseph tumbles into drink and debt as ossified bureaucracy and resurgent nationalism pushes the far-flung, anachronistic empire toward its doom. Author Joseph Roth, though clear-eyed about the empire's many faults and injustices, nevertheless found it preferable to what came after it. (It is no surprise upon reading this novel to learn that Roth drank himself to death on the eve of the Nazi takeover of Europe.) While I have some questions about Joachim Neugroschel's translation--for example, did Roth really switch so haphazardly between the present and past tenses?--there is no denying the dark, poignant power of "The Radetzky March." The Everyman's Library hardcover edition includes an astute and illuminating introduction by Alan Bance, as well as a useful timeline of Roth's life.

1859. At the Battle of Solferino, the young lieutenant Trotta saves the life of Emperor Franz Joseph I. Henceforth he is a colonel and named the Baron von Trotta. The story continues to his son Franz, who becomes a government official as county governor in Bohemia/Galicia - and to his grandson Carl Joseph, who enters military service. It ends with Carl Joseph as a lieutenant in a second-rate chasseur regiment.
During the intervening years, we watch the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy slowly disintegrate, just as the Trotta family goes from the Hero of Solferino to an officer of little account. Carl Joseph wished back to his grandfather, and the Emperor thinks back to when he was young. There are many characters in this book, drawn in magnificent three-dimensional detail, and all of them just as flawed as the Trotta family. The monarchy is eaten up from the inside by these government servants who have no goal and no drive, either spend their days gambling and drinking, or rapidly moving closer to some form of suicide.
The author gives us magnificent descriptions of the times, the people, and their surroundings. It is a book that will haunt you for some time to come, not least because it is very sad and depressing.

This is a truly great novel about disillusionment and loss set during the decline and death of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Written in wonderfully deft and gently ironic prose, it chronicles three generations of a peasant family raised to the aristocracy through a heroic act. By choosing such protagonists, Roth is able to successfully contrast the naive, innocent faith in the monarchy of the Trottas against the actual moral and social collapse of AH society.
However, unlike many a novelist, while Roth clearly understands why citizens grew disillusioned with pre-WW I society, he also notes the price paid by those who are disillusioned. Thus, while all the flaws of Viennese society are decried (corruption, anti-Semitism, incompetence), Roth evokes a genuine sympathy for a time when faith in society still existed.
As the 20th century has been a perpetual and--given communism, fascism, nationalism et al.--failed search for some way to reconstruct the myths that held society together (which were destroyed by WW I), Roth's novel is as timely as ever.
Treat yourself to this sad, touching novel which should be far better know than it is. Roth is one novelist who saw and understood.

This is a wonderful book -- for me falling just short of the 5-star category, because of a datedness that it does not quite transcend, and, most important, a failure to be more than the sum of its parts.
Four generations of the Trotta family -- from gardener to soldier to respected provincial civil-servant , and back, in one individual, through soldier to gardner again -- all live and die during the reign of the last Austro-Hungarian emperor, Franz-Joseph, the assassination of whose son, Arch-Duke Ferdinand, was the touch-point for the start of The Great War.
There are wonderful details in this book, and it is for those -- rather than its general sweep or big themes -- that I most strongly recommend it. The death of the family retainer, Jacques, butler to three generations of Trottas, is superbly drawn, combining humor and touching sentimentality very deftly. The description of the death of the emperor, by which it is balanced, is nearly as good. Life in the civil servant's household is portrayed with almost as much skill and humor as Jane Austin applied to her domestic vignettes. The cool and undemonstrative freindships of both civil-servant and his soldier son are touchingly set out without heavy-handedness. The descriptions of endlessly boring life on the eastern frontier of the empire -- the last stop on the railway line -- in the swampy border garrison town, where all manner of rootless people cross and recross -- White Russians, Cossacks, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Ruthenians, Hungarians, Austrians and Germans, most of them just passing through, as often as not running from something -- are haunting enough to justify the final Trotta's descent from competent but undistinguished soldier to alcoholic wastral and finally to assistant forester on the estate of a friend -- only to be called up at the outbrake of war and to die a particularly needless death trying to fetch water for his thirsty men...needless but somehow "heroic" in its selflessness. All the characters are well drawn, even quite minor ones are multidimensional and not mere caricatures. These are real people leading real lives -- but none of them have that largeness of life that would make them unforgettable. One can, in counterpoint, say that since this is a novel about the passing away of an era, about its ephemerality and frivolousness, the fact that none of the main characters lives beyond that last page (literally or figuratively) is perfectly fitting. Well, perhaps -- but from the standpoint of whether or not this is a truly "classic" novel, I would say it's one of the things that holds it back. On the whole, I can't quite say why I didn't like this book more than I did -- much of the writing is masterful. But I will say that I like it well enough that I am now ordering two more of Roth's novels.

There can be very little more satisfying than discovering a new author. I had never heard of Joseph Roth until a friend recommended I read anything written by him. I picked up this title because it was the only one available in my local library.

What a stroke of luck!

This is a masterpiece of the highest order. There are no accidents in this beautifully crafted and written work of art. Every detail and scene is carefully calculated to present the complex life of the individual in the overall rush of history, as an empire decays and collapses and an entire value system fades away, along with the Emperor Franz Joseph and three generations of the Trotta family. The individual also lives and quickly dies within the eternal cycles of nature, so poignantly drawn by Roth.

I will never be able to do this work justice in just a brief review. I read the Everyman's Library edition, with a brilliant introduction by Alan Bance (which should absolutely be read AFTER reading the work, not before). That introduction does justice to every aspect of this masterpiece and pays tribute to Roth as a major literary figure.

This work alone puts Roth in the company of Flaubert, Mann, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Woolf, Kafka, and anyone else you can name. Bance points out that there's something of a sequel to this work in "The Emperor's Tomb," which I have read and also thoroughly enjoyed.

If you care at all about art and literature, please read "The Radetzky March." I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

The Radetzky March, first published in 1932, 16 years after the abdication of Habsburg rule is considered Joseph Roth's literary masterpiece. This work of fiction is craftily woven with allusion, allegory, irony, and foreshadowing throughout. It is a story of three generations of the Trotta family, their rise to nobility and demise with the empire.
I truly enjoyed this book published some 68 years ago. Personally, I think it truly superiour to most fiction books of today. The book keeps the reader interacting with the story and with the period in which it takes place. I am indebted to my professor who recommended this book as one possible outside reading to the traditional texts.
I HIGHLY recommend this this book!!!!!

For anyone interested in European society before 1914, "The Radetzky March" is a must-read. It is a masterful portrayal of one family's bonds to Austro-Hungarian Empire and the House of Habsburg over three generations.

Unfortunately, as other reviewers have pointed out, Neugroschel's traslation is very disappointing. Some terms are only partially translated ("Rittmeister" becomes "Rittmaster" on p. 94), which is worse than no translation at all. The name of the Austrian parliament, the Reichsrat, is translated as "Imperial Council" (p. 135), but that seems overdone. Reichsrat is isn't the emperor's council, and the word "Reichsrat" is usually left untranslated as a proper noun (e.g. no one calls the Reichstag the "Imperial Diet"). Other Austrian terms, used in the late 19th century, are given Americanisms or neologisms.

If you can get your hands on it, read the British translation of "Radetzky March" (ISBN: 1862076057) published by Granta Books and translated by Michael Hofmann. Hofmann's translation is more sensitive to the feel of the time and more subtle. It is not perfect (Onufrij becomes Onufri, Frau Hirschwitz's Prussianisms are translated in chs. 2 and 3), but it is certainly better.

The final years of the Hapsburg dynasty juxtaposed against the lives of the Trotta family.
Before WW1, the Royal families of Europe could not foresee the growing discontent of the various
social groups that lead up to the Great War to end all wars. When they woke up, it was too late.
The Trottas remained loyal but in the end succumbed to the events of the times. Considered one of
the great German Language novels.

Every Sunday the strains of the Radetsky March are heard outside the residence of Baron von Trotta, son of the lieutenant who saved Emperor Franz Joseph's life at Solferino and father of Lieutenant Carl Joseph who saves the Emperor's portrait from a whorehouse. (Thus have times changed!) As this book narrates the saga of four generations of the von Trotta family and the parallel decline of Franz Joseph's Austro-Hungarian Empire, the strains of this march dwindle until it, too, is finally obliterated.
Roth's masterpiece touches us as he deftly depicts the disillusionment that inevitably replaces the once-elevated code of honor of an outdated Empire. The book's style, that of an omniscient author reminiscent of nineteenth-century aesthetics, complements its subject. Here is a glimpse of a world where military and social rank dictate behavior, where women are seductresses regardless of social pretenses, where servants are endowed with unquestioning loyalty, where Jews live on the fringes of society yet must also subscribe to its rigorous decorum. Yet, as the exploits of the youngest von Trotta illustrate, this world has become decadent in its rigidity.
For the von Trottas, as for the Hapsburgs themselves, this discovery comes at a time when one cannot escape its consequences. For it is the rhythms of the Radetsky March, along with the portrait of the Hero of Solferino (whose heroism is not all that it was made out to be) that shaped even the youngest von Trotta and remain forever in the background, preventing a return to the family's peasant heritage and the romanticism of a more idyllic existence.
Roth's book is well worth the read. It is especially endowed with a gentle irony that bespeaks compassion without indulging in sentimentality. For those of us still trying to understand what formed the Western world of the twentieth century, it abounds with all the poignant music, imagery, and people of pre-World War I conditions in Eastern Europe.

Perhaps there's slightly less complexity and sophistication than in the works of these more famous writers. But I also found the narrative to be much more engaging and enjoyable than The Man Without Qualities or Magic Mountain, despite a pace that was just as slow. It's a little less ironic than Stendhal or Musil and more melancholy. It's suffused with an autumnal sense of loss--the loss of love, honor, heroism, and empire--but it doesn't yet describe what takes its place in positive terms, aside from nationalism.

There can be very little more satisfying than discovering a new author. I had never heard of Joseph Roth until a friend recommended I read anything written by him. I picked up this title because it was the only one available in my local library.
What a stroke of luck!
This is a masterpiece of the highest order. There are no accidents in this beautifully crafted and written work of art. Every detail and scene is carefully calculated to present the complex life of the individual in the overall rush of history, as an empire decays and collapses and an entire value system fades away, along with the Emperor Franz Joseph and three generations of the Trotta family. The individual also lives and quickly dies within the eternal cycles of nature, so poignantly drawn by Roth.
I will never be able to do this work justice in just a brief review. I read the Everyman's Library edition, with a brilliant introduction by Alan Bance (which should absolutely be read AFTER reading the work, not before). That introduction does justice to every aspect of this masterpiece and pays tribute to Roth as a major literary figure.
This work alone puts Roth in the company of Flaubert, Mann, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Woolf, Kafka, and anyone else you can name. Bance points out that there's something of a sequel to this work in "The Capuchin Crypt," which I intend to read next.
If you care at all about art and literature, please read this book. You will not be disappointed.

I can see why The Radetsky March , written by Joseph Roth in 1932, is regarded as a masterpiece. The author’s writing is truly poetic with touches of irony and trenchant descriptions of characters and locales, taking place in an era leading up to World War I and the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, although the informative observations of people and places paint the picture accurately well, the story itself lacks energy. Indeed, there seems to be a dearth of dialogue in the plot of this novel; descriptions seem to take precedence over conversation. Perhaps that’s representative of 1930s writing style or of the author himself.
The translation from the German by Joachim Neugroschel seems quite good, with only a few inconsequential grammatical errors. Interestingly though, the author appeared to use the word “And” at the beginning of sentences all too frequently. Perhaps that also may related to writing style in those days.
Despite all that, you have to come away appreciating how, as the introduction by Nadine Gordimer says, “the old royalist, hierarchic world of Church and State with kings assuming devine authority on earth” began to disintegrate.

Centering on the slavishly loyal family of the man who (fictionally) saved the life of kaiser Franz Joseph at the battle of Solferino, 'Radetzky' wasn't what I expected. It has some fine character analyses of royals, merchants, soldiers, servants, land peasants, artists, ladies and whores. There are interesting literary and music allusions. Roth chooses to skip over a lot of history between Solferino and WWI. Neither Custozza, nor Strauss is ever mentioned. It could leave the mistaken impression that the 'Radetsky March' originated with Solferino. There are some good depictions of life in Vienna and in the outer reaches of the empire. The book stops short of the actual collapse of the empire into a small country. Maybe I'll read his other book.

This story of one Austro-Hungarian noble family from 1859 to 1916 is a richly textured, nostalgic look back at the lost world of the Habsburg Empire. It is a 20th-century masterpiece with a foundation in the 19th century. Though little-known to Americans, Joseph Roth has long been accorded a place in the literary Pantheon in central Europe. His work has even achieved that dubiously honorific status of being read in German high schools. "The Radetzky March" is generally considered to be his masterpiece; however, I would also encourage readers to explore his other books.

The Overlook version, however, has a few small flaws. The translation can sometimes be rough, although it is generally very fine. Neugroschel, the translator, leaves some words untranslated and makes some uncharacteristic translation errors. A "Rittmeister" was a captain in the Austro-Hungarian calvary, which few people would know. His soldiers play a card game called "tarot." This is not correct. As most readers know, tarot cards are a fortune-telling device. "Tarok" (with a "k") was the most popular card game among the Austrian elite in the 19th century. The editors also mislabeled the title of the cover photo, leaving out the "Franz" in "Franz Joseph I."

Moreover, the introduction by Nadine Gordimer can be a distraction. Ms. Gordimer may be a Nobel Prize winner, but she is not a scholar of pre-World War I Austria or of Austrian literature. Her introduction is merely one writer's musings on another writer. It might enhance one's understanding if one has never heard of Roth before. For those who do know him, it says nothing new. She even writes, "I am glad that, instead, I know him in the only way writers themselves know to be valid for an understanding of their work: through the work themselves." Is she speaking for herself or for all writers everywhere? Is she dismissing the entire fields of literary criticism and biography? Some of what she writes is interesting, but I am left to wonder why the introduction is there other than to boost the book's credentials. (i.e. This book is "approved" by a famous present-day author. After all, she and J. M. Coetzee, both South African Nobel Prize winners, are quoted on the back of the book, giving their stamp of approval.) A more fitting introduction would have enhanced this edition.

I am looking forward to the NEW new translation by Michael Hofmann, already available in Britain.

I bought this book after hearing the LA times literary magazine editor and Nadine Gordimer refer to it as one of their favorites. They are both fans of Joseph Roth, and with good reason.

If what you're looking for is a beautifully crafted, thoughtful and evocative book, this is it. In spite of the depth of expression, it is easy reading. The page that details the first seduction of a 15 year old virgin military cadet by an older married woman is brilliant. I read it over and over again--Roth wrote the scene with a delicacy and understanding that is marvelous. Like the best writing, there is a trueness to it that reveals things the reader didn't know about him or herself, or had forgotten.

In this age of indulgent, overwritten fiction, this novel is a relief. Thank heaven Roth has been resurrected.

a truly great book. often compared to his countryman and rough contemporary robert musil, roth in radetzky march at least more closely approaches tolstoy in his combination of historic sweep and close observation. sad, funny, sweet and tart with irony, roth conjures up the dwindling years of the hapsburgs with uncanny accuracy and deep sympathy. as you read, you watch a world die, first slowly, through administrative incompetence and intellectual ennui, then through catastrophic loss in war. a wonder of literature. god knows, there are few enough of them. read it. and read the rest of roth -- particularly "the emporer's tomb," a sort of sequel to this novel.

It's a beautiful prose, some pages funny and sarcastic, with keen political observations, some other pages darkly poetic, like the final chapters, where people learn about the death of archduke Francis Ferdinand during this wild celebration ... also one of the best, really tragic, descriptions of the first days of war.
Still, the main character, young von Trotta, is not shown with all the psychological nuance one might expect from a book like this.

this book was good, but not great. mr. roth does a great job in telling the story but he fails in presenting the story to the reader. mr. roth includes very little dialogue in the book. either he feels it isn't needed or he is insecure about his capabilities to write meaningful conversations. his characters barely speak, and when they do, they rarely say anything of substance. mr. roth's descriptions of people and items are extraordinary at times but it is not enough to carry the interest of his audience. the second half of the book is much more interesting than the first half and it rescued me from waving the white flag on the whole experience. if you can, purchase this one in the bargain books section.

This is a wonderful book but Neugroschel has no understanding of idiomatic English or any ability to express the poetry of the original. If you can get it this book is far better read in the translation by Geoffrey Dunlop.

Charlie Rose in a recent interview with Maria Vargas Llosa asked the famed Peruvian author/essayist/politician what was his favorite historical novel. This book was the one Llosa named. That's damned high praise, I think.

Charlie Rose in a recent interview with Maria Vargas Llosa asked the famed Peruvian author/essayist/politician what was his favorite historical novel. This book was the one Llosa named. That's damned high praise, I think.

This is no doubt an important novel, but this translation is so awful that it's excruciating to read. Probably well worth seeking out other translations, but avoid this one like the plague. It's sloppy, careless, un-idiomatic and practically unreadable.