'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
Untethered by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, with it, the dwindling of his family's name. Franz Ferdinand Trotta has few ambitions beyond frequenting the cafes and bars of Vienna. But in a rapidly changing and violent age, disinterest is not an option: as the first intimations of Nazi barbarities emerge, Franz Ferdinand is drawn, inexorably, into the coming storm.
Vivid and prophetic, Roth's acclaimed novel is a stirring reflection on the passing of time, youth and disillusionment, and an elegy to a lost Europe.
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
