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Joseph Roth, Austrian-Jewish novelist, was born in 1894 near Lemberg in Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, now in Ukraine. He studied at Vienna University and in the years following World War I worked in Vienna, Berlin and Munich as a journalist, mostly for left-wing publications, which involved him in extensive European travel. He also began to write novels. For most of his life he had no fixed abode, preferring hotel rooms and writing at café tables. In 1932 his masterpiece, The Radetzky March, was published. In 1933 when Hitler came to power his position became dangerous and he moved to Paris; his books were amongst those burnt by the Nazis that year. He continued to travel and to write, but began to suffer poor health - partly as a result of alcoholism. He died prematurely in 1939.
This famous study of the failing Hapsburg Empire, first published in 1932, is centred round three generations of a loyal military family in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Joseph Trotta, a young infantry lieutenant, saves the life of the Kaiser, and changes the course of his family's history. Decorated by the Kaiser and raised to captain's rank, Joseph becomes so splendid an officer that he loses touch with his roots; his paymaster father and peasant grandfather seem like another species to him. Trotta's deeds are immortalized in a children's reading book but so inaccurate is the tale that he resigns in protest. Discharged from the army as a Baron, he ages rapidly and spends his days tending his father-in law's garden. His son Captain Franz von Trotta and grandson Carl Joseph continue the family tradition of unquestioning loyalty to the Emperor, abiding by the outmoded rules and codes of behaviour of a passing age. Carl especially feels displaced and not true officer material despite the gorgeous trappings and privileges that accompany high rank. His love affairs are with other soldiers' wives as he has little social life and no social skills, and his interaction with fellow officers and his servant is equally strained. This is a moving story of the purposelessness and inadequacy engendered by the loss of ideals, and an absorbing journey through pre-war German history. Roth's descriptions of people and nature are excellently crafted and humanity is displayed here in all its myriad forms. A true classic. (Kirkus UK)
