Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series: The Radetzky March : Introduction by Alan Bance (Hardcover)

from rainpebble

While this book was very good I had trouble staying focused on it. I found it to be quite interesting in the European social mores of the time, which was just prior to WWI, but the main characters did not seem fully developed to me. The book is about 3 generations of of the men in the Trotter fam...

from steller0707

A view of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, told through the life of a citizen - privileged, but not wealthy - whose family is part of the Old Order. The Radezsky March by Johann Strauss, the Father, is used throughout as a motif indicating the loyalty to Empire. The destruction of the...

from JanetinLondon

I liked this book a lot, but after I finished it I wondered what exactly it was that I liked - had I just accepted that because others had praised it, or because it is a "classic", I must like it? After all, I thought on reflection, nothing actually HAPPENS in this book. Then I read the introduct...

from stef7sa

Slow paced but full of memorable scenes. Roth is a master in composing scenes in which every detail expresses the mood and meaning of that scene, like Flaubert although Roth is less compact in his writing. Definitely a masterpiece worth rereading for its language and those scenes.

from KateSherrod

"A word, a word so easily spoken; it is not spoken."I am developing a minor obsession with the literature of the 19th and early 20th century Hapsburg Empire, and I can't quite put my finger on why, or how it started, unless it was when I read about Robert Musil in Philip Ball's amazing Critical M...