I read this book without having first read Radetzky March, something which I now
regret (slightly) but that still didn’t prevent me from loving this novel. And
I didn’t just love it, I also used it in an essay about the relationship
between architecture and memory that won the praise of my Cambridge professors
(probably the only time that happened).
There is something in the classy decadence of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire that is particularly appealing to me (and I don’t
even come from the part of Italy that was under Austrian control for a long
time). I’m not particularly at ease with the way in which Trotta treats his wife,
but that probably (and sadly) is justified by his upbringing.
Oddly enough, this is another book whose
details are now escaping me, but the final walk to Franz Joseph’s crypt is a
wonderfully melancholic picture that I think will always stay with me.
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