The Radetsky March, by Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth is someone I feel I should have heard of earlier. He was a contemporary and a friend of other writers whose work I admire. Perhaps I had heard of him in passing, but not in a way that stuck. It was Daša Drndić's EEG that brought him to my attention and, on finishing it, I promptly ordered two of his books: The Radetzky March, his most celebrated novel, and The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars, a collection of his short works. The title of the latter jumped out at me, with the description from In the Night of Time of all the stateless Eastern Europeans in Paris hotels still fresh in my mind. 

The Radetzky March is the story of three generations of men over the last several decades of the Habsburg Monarchy, living at the cusp of modernity. The grandfather of the story, the eldest Trotta, is the son of Slovenian peasants, but he saves the life of the young Franz Josef I at the Battle of Solferino in 1859. For this, he's rewarded with a title and finds himself the recipient of the Emperor's favor, a fortune that passes down to his son and grandson. (The Emperor lived a long life.) Each generation of Trottas is alien to the one before it. The eldest Trotta becomes disillusioned with the military life, and moves to his in-laws' country estate to farm. He doesn't imagine his son a farmer, but he also refuses a military life for him. The second Trotta is groomed by his father for a life in civil service, eventually becoming a district leader in Moravia, where he lives a life of strict routine. His own son, the youngest Trotta, he decides will have the military career that he was denied by his father. He's not cut out for it, but like his father before him, he doesn't dare to disobey his father. But where the second Trotta seems to accept the life his father dictated for him with equanimity, the youngest seems destined for misery and feels it. The latter two Trottas dominate the book after the death of the eldest, and they inhabit a world that is crumbling around them. The signs are everywhere, but the father is mostly oblivious to them, and the son is stationed at a garrison in the eastern reaches of the empire, where he drinks his life away. 

While the story arc is rather grim, The Radetzky March is filled with beautiful, funny, and clear observations of life at the end of an era. The rush into modernity and the looming Great War are palpable. The description of the night the news of Franz Ferdinand's assassination arrived in the remote Ukrainian outpost where the youngest Trotta was stationed was stunning. The regiment has organized a festival to celebrate its 99th anniversary. A raging summer storm moves events indoors. The bands play and the guests dance while a few senior military officers discuss the rumored assassination in another room. Immediately on receipt of the news, nationalist and ethnic divisions rise up between the officers of the same military. Word gets out and the bands play a requiem as guests keep dancing. I do this chapter no justice in describing it; it's just incredible.

While part of me wishes I had known about Joseph Roth earlier, I'm very glad to have found him now.