The Radetzky March

Review

'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

'Roth's masterpiece is of such enormous relevance to our times that we must be grateful that it has found in Michael Hofmann, a translator who does justice to its understated grief' -- The Times

'The Radetzky March [is] a majestically assured and engaging novel. Hofmann s version restores a landmark work to a quite dazzling luminosity. Read The Radetzky March and the season's finest classic serial will unfold unaided in the matchless theatre of imagination' -- Independent

'A superb new translation...a dark disturbing novel of eccentric beauty...Read all his books, his stories, his observations and wonder at the intelligence, natural poetry and humanity of a gifted and candid master storyteller' Irish Times

'English translations have been available before, but this one, by a seriously committed Rothian, Michael Hofmann, is a big event'-- --Spectator

'Hoffman has produced an excellent work and done justice to what the original must have been like. I found the characters to be gripping, the events exciting and the characters to be sometimes a little too real. All in all, a great book that I would recommend to everyone.'-- --M2 Best Books

About 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 and The Radetzky March, all published by Granta Books. MICHAEL HOFMANN is the highly acclaimed translator of Joseph Roth, Wolfgang Koeppen, Kafka and Brecht, and the author of several books of poems and book of criticism. He has translated nine previous books by Joseph Roth. He teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville.