The Radetzky March

The Radetzky March follows the rise and demise of the Trotta dynasty through three generations, as their faith in the empire disintegrates amid doomed love affairs, gambling, 180 Proof liquor and the shattering arrival of the First World War.

Grandfather, son and grandson are equally dependent on the empire: the first for his enoblement; the second for the civil virtues that make him a meticulous servant of an administration whose failure he can neither comprehend nor survive; the third for the family standards of conduct which he cannot attain but against which he is unable to rebel.

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'Sublime ... it inspires a kind of evangelical cult passion among its devotees' Simon Schama

'Roth is Austria's Chekhov' William Boyd

Strauss's Radetzky March, signature tune of one of Europe's most powerful regimes, presides over Joseph Roth's account of three generations of the Trotta family in the years preceding the Austro-Hungarian collapse in 1918. Grandfather, son and grandson are equally dependent on the empire: the first for his enoblement; the second for the civil virtues that make him a meticulous servant of an administration whose failure he can neither comprehend nor survive; the third for the family standards of conduct which he cannot attain but against which he is too enfeebled to rebel.