The Emperor's Tomb

(Paperback)

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The Emperor's Tomb is a magically evocative, haunting elegy to the vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to the passing of time and the loss of youth and friends. Prophetic and regretful, intuitive and exact, Roth's acclaimed novel is the tale of one man's struggle to come to terms with the uncongenial society of post-First World War Vienna and the first intimations of Nazi barbarities.

'Roth is a master of sharp scene-shaping and storytelling... wonderful' - A.S.Byatt

Reviews

An urgent and deceptively moving lamentation of stark emotion... A profound farewell gesture of love and sorrow, such heartbreaking sorrow * Irish Times *
Roth is a master of sharp scene-shaping and storytelling... wonderful -- A.S. Byatt * Guardian *
Superbly translated by the poet Michael Hofmann... Roth remains one of the greatest literary geniuses of the 20th century -- Ian Thomson * Evening Standard *
Vividly written... No-one handles the passing of time, and the regrets this brings, better than Roth -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *
Breathtaking... In despair, battling with poverty and illness, he nevertheless manages to create one astonishing scene after another -- David Herman * Jewish Chronicle *
The carefully wrought work of a poet in full sympathy with his subject and his subject matter, in all its rootlessness, melancholy and ironic brevity * Economist *
This lament has all the more power for knowing it was written as Europe was about to fall once more -- Ben Felsenburg * Metro *
Events unfurl amid the morbid carnival of ever more grotesque political mutations, preceding the Anschluss in 1938... courageous, irrepressible [and] resplendent -- Will Stone * TLS *
A new translation by the peerless Michael Hofmann, this is the troubled, troubling account of a young man struggling to fit into Vienna in the wake of the First World War, a time when the Nazis' behaviour was slowly becoming evident * Sunday Herald *
Remarkable -- Alan Taylor * The Herald *
Here is a rare opportunity for English-speaking readers to better understand [the] fate [of the Austro-Hungarian Empire]... Worth reading -- Stefan Wagstyl * Financial Times *
A resourceful translation -- Anthony Cummins * Observer *
Roth is able to contain moral universes within the tiniest of narrative spans, and to convey almost unbearable purity in the plainest terms * Scotland on Sunday *
His books posses an eerie clairvoyant feel, shattering in their simplicity, exalting in their moral philosophical weight * Los Angeles Times *
Luminous * Elle Decoration *
Fractured and melancholic... more an extended prose poem than a novel -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
Roth wrote of the most serious things with the lightest of touches -- Howard Jacobsen, Summer books round up 2016 * Sunday Times *
Beautiful, elegant, almost dreamlike * The Times *
Unforgettable, really great literature -- William Boyd
Lean, choppy. ... Pauperized and debilitated in exile, Roth was at his lowest ebb by 1939, but, in that courageous and irrepressible vein which marks the resplendent prose of The Emperor's Tomb, he still ends on a high * TLS *

Author Bio

JOSEPH ROTH (1894-1939) was a prolific journalist and novelist. One of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, his work traces the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the rising fascist threat in Europe. On Hitler's assumption of power, he was obliged to leave Germany for Paris, where he died in poverty a few years later. His books include What I Saw, Job, The White Cities, The String of Pearls and The Radetzky March, all published by Granta Books.

MICHAEL HOFMANN is the highly acclaimed translator of Joseph Roth, Franz Kafka, Hans Fallada, Bertolt Brecht, and many more. A poet and essayist, he also teaches at the University of Florida.