The Radetzky March (Von Trotta Family, #1) in Around the World in 80 Books

Mar 09, 2022 Stephanie Barko rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Originally, I selected this title from Margaret Donsbach's index of historical novels to understand pre-WWI Austro-Hungarian history. I also hoped to get some idea of why my paternal grandparents emigrated to America, since I do not have the genealogical facts about the transfer that made me an American citizen in the next century.

Author Joseph Roth, who died in 1939, was born in the Austro-Hungarian empire, in what is now eastern Ukraine. Through Roth's descriptions of the land and way of life, ...more

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Jun 07, 2018 Steve rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I have mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, looking back at my WW 1 fiction reading experience, Joseph Roth can be awfully heavy handed. Figurative birds of death circling will, by novel's end, eventually morph into the real thing as the the Great War finally erupts. Big Two-Hearted River or To The Lighthouse it is not. The Raditzsky March wears its heart on its embroidered sleeve. That said, there are numerous beautifully wrought scenes throughout the book. A playful (but adulterous) sed I have mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, looking back at my WW 1 fiction reading experience, Joseph Roth can be awfully heavy handed. Figurative birds of death circling will, by novel's end, eventually morph into the real thing as the the Great War finally erupts. Big Two-Hearted River or To The Lighthouse it is not. The Raditzsky March wears its heart on its embroidered sleeve. That said, there are numerous beautifully wrought scenes throughout the book. A playful (but adulterous) seduction, the death of an old and loyal servant, the genuine friendship between two old men who like to play chess, the grief of a father for his son, are just a few examples that come to mind. Each of these scenes is handled with a sensitivity that one might find in Tolstoy or Chekhov. Roth is a master of the human heart.

As many have noted, this is a generational book that also reports, mostly offstage, the decline and fall of the Austrian Empire. The book focuses on the von Trotta family, starting with the grandfather, who saves the Emperor Franz Joseph at the Battle of Solferino. As a result, the "Hero of Solferino" is elevated by a thankful Emperor from his farmer background to the nobility. (The irony, from the get-go, is that the battle was lost.) But the von Trotta family, to some extent, embraces their new station (though the grandfather is still a farmer at heart). His son, Franz, the "district captain" becomes a local official (the "district captain") , and his son, Carl Joseph, who is something of lost soul, becomes a soldier. A rigid sense of duty (and class) dominates the actions of the older generations, but all this is being impacted by the multiplying encroachments of the modern world. At its best, Roth highlights this sense of dry rot, surprisingly from many of those who inhabited that world. By the time the war starts, there is a resignation, from top to bottom throughout society, that the Empire is ending. To my mind, I guess I had always thought this more a conclusion that historians arrived at after the war. Roth, painting with a broad but believable brush, suggests that there was no surprise in the Empire's dissolution. It was not a matter of If but When. Perhaps any delicate fictional treatment of the Empire's quite obvious demise would have itself been a lie. But the real stories are with the characters, and on that front Roth succeeds. ...more

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