The Emperor's Tomb

Translated from German, a novel portraying the post-WW1 decline of Viennese society from a "twentieth-century master of the quixotic and melancholy." (Publishers Weekly)

 


The Emperor's Tomb – the last novel Joseph Roth wrote – is a haunting elegy to the vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Running from 1913 to 1938, from the eve of one world war to the eve of the next, the novel continues the saga of the von Trotta family from The Radetzky March.  Roth tells of one man's foppish, sleepwalking, spoiled youth, and his struggle to come to terms with the uncongenial society of post-First World War Vienna, financial ruin, and the first intimations of Nazi barbarities.  A powerful and moving look at a decaying society in the devastating aftermath of the Great War.


 


"Sharply observed." —The Guardian