The Radetzky March | Granta

  • Published: 07/04/2022
  • ISBN: 9781783788453
  • Granta Books
  • 320 pages

The Radetzky March

Joseph Roth

Translated by Michael Hofmann

‘a 20th Century masterpiece’– The Telegraph’
“For sheer, epic sweep, I love reading The Radetzky March… I can’t recommend it highly enough” Jeremy Paxman

Set during the doomed splendour of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Radetzky March tells the story of the celebrated Trotta family, tracing their rise and fall over three generations. Theirs is a sweeping history of heroism and duty, desire and compromise, tragedy and heartbreak, a story that lasts until the darkening eve of WWI, when all is set to fall apart. A rich and luminous masterpiece, moving, compassionate, witty and dramatic, The Radetzky March is one of the great reading pleasures of 20th-century literature.

One of the greatest novels ever written, Joseph Roth tells us who we are, and what we might yet become. Timeless, humane, tragic

Philippe Sands

For sheer, epic sweep, I love reading The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, set in imperial Vienna. I can't recommend it highly enough

Jeremy Paxman

Timeless... I re-read this book every two or three years, captivated anew by its low-key melancholia and its wry take on the human predicament

William Boyd, Mail on Sunday

The Author

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was the great elegist of the cosmopolitan, tolerant and doomed Central European culture that flourished in the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Born into a Jewish family in Galicia, on the eastern edge of the empire, he was a prolific political journalist and novelist. On Hitler’s assumption of power, he was obliged to leave Germany for Paris, where he died in poverty a few years later. His books include What I Saw, Job, The White Cities, The String of Pearls, The Emperor’s Tomb and The Radetzky March, all published by Granta Books.

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The Translator

Michael Hofmann is a poet, translator and critic. His latest book of poems is One Lark, One Horse. He recently translated Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Kairos.

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From the Same Author

Joseph Roth on Granta.com

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