The latest addition to my website is Joseph Roth‘s Die Kapuzinergruft (The Emperor’s Tomb). This was the last novel he published in his lifetime, when he was living in exile, after the Nazis had annexed Austria. He died the following year. It is a sad and gloomy tale focussing on Franz Ferdinand Trotta, cousin of the hero of Radetzkymarsch (The Radetzky March). Trotta is so taken with his Slovenian cousin and friend that he escapes from his man about town life in Vienna to visit them. War (WWI) is declared while he is there. Instead of joining his Vienna regiment, he gets a transfer to his cousin’s regiment and is almost immediately taken prisoner, returning to a defeated Vienna, where everyone is broke. And then the Nazis take over. It is the end of an era.