Joseph Roth: The Emperor's Tomb

Dull and so disappointing. While it gave an intriguing picture of life in the Austria-Hungarian Empire in the time just before the rise of the Nazis. The characters never really engaged me and I felt that the vast majority of the book ambled somewhat aimlessly...although of course that may have been a deliberate stylistic trope to reflect the baffled puzzlement of many of the characters themselves...but I am not sure at all! The was a flatness about the writing which I found irritating.

However the final chapter was a different beast altogether. Superbly powerful with a wonderful looming sense of inevitable disaster around the corner.Why couldn't the rest of the book been like this?