Joseph Roth was one of the most significant German-language writers of the interwar period, yet few major studies of his work have been published in English. Kati Tonkin's monograph spans Roth's novelistic career, challenging the widely held assumption that his writing can be divided into an early -socialist- and a later -monarchist- phase: that his late novels Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft are deeply nostalgic, presenting an idealized picture of the Habsburg Empire, a -backward-turned utopia.- In contrast, Tonkin reads the later works not as escapist but as attempts to grasp the...