Published: 04/08/2022
ISBN: 9781783788507
Granta Books
208 pages

The Emperor’s Tomb

The Emperor’s Tomb is a magically evocative, haunting elegy to the vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to the passing of time and the loss of youth and friends. Prophetic and regretful, intuitive and exact, Roth’s acclaimed novel is the tale of one man’s struggle to come to terms with the uncongenial society of post-First World War Vienna and the first intimations of Nazi barbarities.

An urgent and deceptively moving lamentation of stark emotion... A profound farewell gesture of love and sorrow, such heartbreaking sorrow

Irish Times

Roth is a master of sharp scene-shaping and storytelling... wonderful

A.S. Byatt, Guardian

Superbly translated by the poet Michael Hofmann... Roth remains one of the greatest literary geniuses of the 20th century

Ian Thomson, Evening Standard

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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