Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122620 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Julia Flynn, Sunday Telegraph
`It can fairly claim to be one of the great novels of the last century'

Roger Scruton, The Times
`A heartfelt evocation of an Empire ...Roth's masterpiece is of such enormous relevance to our times'

Boyd Tonkin, Independent
`Read The Radetzky March and the season's finest classic serial will unfold - unaided - in the matchless theatre of imagination'

Customer Reviews

Superb
Roth enmbues his tale of declining empire with a dramatic tension, which made me have a knot in my stomach all the way through. You can feel the destruction awaiting his characters who seem powerless to react to the events controlling their lives. Even though you don't want to go on, you remain gripped.

A singular and brilliant novel

There's something wonderful about reading Joseph Roth even before one begins a novel of his. I came across him by chance rather than active effort and he is, of course, still nowhere near as well-known and alluded to as his talent should have already assured. So you get the wonderful sense of discovery, which only adds to the beauty of his prose.

This novel is beautifully lyrical. As a couple of the other reveiwers have mentioned, one feels compelled to say that it is not sentimental, though the texture of it, its tone, sometimes makes it feel as though it almost is.

The most potent scenes, for me, were those which so pointedly expressed a feeling of regret, of disiappontment and failure. We have all felt that stomach-lurching collapse, that sudden and absolute knowledge that we have done something very wrong, that we have ruined something, that something important to us is now over. The Radetzky March is as sad as it is beautiful.

It's also wonderfully funny. The wit verges on the Dostoyevskian in its eccentricity and is brilliantly compelling and balanced. Roth's writing style, amidst a weighty, formal narrative, is so joyfully unusual. The way massive events are meticulously introduced and then torn through at a hurtling pace only to land- ta-da- at the next plot-point is so refreshing, so out of the ordinary.

My favourite comment in the introduction (and surely this translator deserves some sort of award for seemingly introducing the English-speaking world to Roth single-handedly) is his basic summation of many of Roth's protagonists- they are just tired men out of their depth. And this also allows for tragi-comedy: the passages describing Trotta's slump into ninety-proof reliance are brilliant. There is never an occasion not to have a drink in this nowhere border garrison. And he cheerfully drinks the days away, amiable to all he passes, though only he doesn't realise that his step is faltering, his tunic stained, his buttons done up wrong...

I'd recommend anything by this author, to anyone, and this, surely, will eventually gain its rightful standing as a vital must-read for anyone interested in literature.

Timeless
Although set in the historic background of the Austrian - Hungary empire, the book is timeless in that it describes the increasing discrepancy between actual, political develoments and the set of values to which an older generation tries to adhere. The same holds for the relationship between a father and a son. Often the prose is wonderful ("living bread" rather than grain) and the subtle way in which the story develops surely must make this one of the most beautiful books ever written. Very moving, very recommendable.