The Radetzky March

About Joseph Roth

JOSEPH ROTH (1894-1939) was the great elegist of the cosmopolitan tolerant and doomed Central European culture that flourished in the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Born into a Jewish family in Galicia on the eastern edge of the empire he was a prolific political journalist and novelist. 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 Wolfgang Koeppen Kafka and Brecht and the author of several books of poems and book of criticism. He has translated nine previous books by Joseph Roth. He teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville.