The Radetzky March

by Joseph Roth

Book Overview

"Epic . . . brilliantly achieved." (New York Times Book Review)

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.

This...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1585673269
• ISBN13: 9781585673261
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Joseph Roth words on paper are most incredible.

Joseph Roth was one helluva writer. His literary flair has to read to be believed. No review could give justice to this novel. Drop everything and get the book! Then you'll understand.

An Austrian "War and Peace"

Even the title of this spectacular novel is both wistful and tongue in cheek. Field marshal Count Radetzky had won his two battles against the Italians, but the Italian Risorgimento continued unabated all the same. By the time this novel starts at the battle of Solferino, a decade after Radetzky, the decay of the Habsburg Empire has been formally set in motion. All that is left of the field marshal's victories is the march composed in his honor by Johann Strauss Sr., rendered over and over by bands in the gazebos of an Empire in total denial of its inevitable doom.Like all great fiction, this novel has many layers and in the end all these layers form a whole from which a greater truth emerges. At one level, this is a record of the rise and fall of the Trottas, Slovenian peasants, who made it into the history books when lieutenant Joseph Trotta saved the life of the young Habsburg emperor at the battle of Solferino. He is rewarded with a knighthood and makes it to baron in due course. His elevated status destroys what there is left of his relation with his father, a war veteran himself, who lost an eye when serving under Radetzky, in an age when promotions didn't come this fast. In any society, the father-son relation is complicated and ridden with potential conflict. These conflictual aspects get further exacerbated under the rigid customs of Austro-Hungarian aristocracy. As the father-son relation keeps changing through four generations of Trottas, so do the relations of all these fathers and sons to the supreme father figure, the long lived Emperor Franz Joseph himself. Ultimately Austria appears as a "country of grandsons" driven by their fathers to the impossible task of living up to an officially sanctioned mythical image of their grandfathers, a clear prescription for the disaster which followed.At a different level this book explores the rigid set of rules underlying the organization of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With its many national groups and social castes, this empire could only function with a well defined set of rules in place. The rigidity and immutability of these outdated rules give rise to absurd situations, such as a senseless duel between a regiment's physician, a near-sighted Jew, and a heavy drinking career officer, they both meet their deaths. Even at the highest level, His Apostolic Majesty's own exalted status derives directly from a divine right in an era when religion is becoming ever more irrelevant to his subjects. The absence of the slightest evolution in these rules, necessarily produces some bizarre "loopholes". In a society in which honor and morals are handed down from generation to generation, aging aristocratic beauties do not lose their standing in society even as they indulge in the kind of promiscuity one would normally associate with a cavalry officer. The whole love life of the fourth generation lieutenant Trotta has him cast as the sex object of sexually voracious married women. In between these women,

What a treasure!

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.

Magnificent novel of loss

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.

A MASTERPIECE

This is a novel so good that it is hard to find anything critical to say about it.Perhaps the reader needs to know a bit about the end of the Habsburg Monarchy first- try the relevant chapter of a good history textbook.Other than that ,this is a work of astonishing qualitites. The prose is written with extraordinary care: Roth's description of the appearance of things is beautiful in itself and becomes even more so when you realise that he is recording the details of a vanished way of life. There are scenes which really do deserve the overworked adjective 'unforgettable'.His prose is so clear, economical and precise that you have to compare him to somebody like Tolstoy. This book is hardly known at all in the English-speaking countries, which is a very great shame. Roth disapproved of his characters' actions and the Empire in which they lived and yet he managed to make me genuinely mourn the end of both the Habsburg Empire and the Trotta family.

one of the overlooked great novels of the twentieth century

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.