The haunting sequel to the masterpiece The Radetzky March.
As the sun sets on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, young Franz Ferdinand Trotta—cousin to the hero of The Radetzky March—finds himself adrift in a world of aristocratic ease and bohemian decadence. But the year is 1913, and the grand tapestry of Imperial Vienna is about to be torn asunder.
From the smoke-filled cafes of a dying capital to the brutal frozen wastes of a Siberian POW camp, Trotta's journey mirrors the collapse of a civilization. Returning to a Vienna he no longer recognizes—a city of breadlines, fractured identities, and rising shadows—he must confront the ultimate erosion of his class and his country.
Written in 1938 as the Nazi "Anschluss" loomed, Joseph Roth's final novel is a devastatingly beautiful elegy for a vanished world. It is a story of loyalty, displacement, and the heartbreaking search for a home that no longer exists. This edition preserves the celebrated John Hoare translation, capturing the "eerie, clairvoyant" prose of one of the 20th century's greatest writers.
"Roth details without pity the inner life of the authentic self." —New York Times
