The Radetzky March

NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 '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.