Ah, Joseph Roth and the finis Austriae! Does it get any better than that? Well, in a way it does, considering that my favourite Roth novel (or rather a short story - The Legend of the Holy Drinker) is actually set in Paris...
Radetzky March is a wonderful novel (despite the fact that it took me a week to finish it because of the impending fatherhood and, erm, the Olympics...) and one of those books that I wish I could persuade my students to read.
Interestingly, Roth ultimately seems to love his characters despite the fact that more often than not these have to be bailed out by the Emperor, and that their careless actions lead directly or indirectly to the death of a number of people throughout the book (then again, the atmosphere surrounding the duel in the first half of the book reminded me of Ridley Scott's The Duellists so those deaths are justified!).
Speaking of the Emperor and his powers - the chapters directly related to his ageing are possibly the best-written of the book, but (speaking as a historian...) Roth seems to conveniently forget the fact that by 1914 the Austrian one was ultimately an empire hell bent on starting a war with Serbia (although not with the whole of Europe).
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