The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth should be considered a classic.

I have just finished this book and I am full of despair. This book should truly be considered as worthy as the works of Tolstoy and Chekhov, yet when I have asked others they say they have never heard of it. The prose is beautiful and the subject matter is eternally tragic. I have never dealt with anything that tells the story of WW1 from an Austro-Hungarian perspective. We see Carl Joseph turn from a boy to a man living constantly in the uniform of a soldier. His relationship with his father is heart-wrenching. They both want to cry out and embrace one another, but their stations and the times they live in stop them. We see Carl Joseph's varied romantic struggles, we see as friends pass through his life and come and go. We see him struggle with coming to terms with a world that is changing and an empire that is crumbling. We see all this, his ups and downs, his loves and his losses and yet he is shot in the skull merely days into WW1.

This book has had a great effect on me, I have spent hours pondering on what a waste war is and especially how absurd WW1 was. Countless died for a needless cause. This book should be heralded as a piece of divine fiction. It has made this grown man cry - and I think it should make many others.