THE RADETZKY MARCH. This item is unavailable.THE RADETZKY MARCH

THE RADETSKY MARCH is subtle and touching study of family life at the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Writing in the traditional form of the family saga, Roth nevertheless manages to bring to his story a completely individual manner which gives at the same time the detailed and intimate portrait of a life and the wider panorama of a failing dynasty. Not yet well known in English-speaking countries, Joseph Roth is one of the most distinguished Austrian writers of our century, worthy to be bracketed with Musil and Kraus.

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.