There is certainly no shortage of writing on Austria-Hungary and its legacy. But although tangible evidence of the Habsburg monarchy remains crystallized in Central European art and architecture, as well as in its cafés and antique stores, most of our knowledge of its history, writes Adam Kozuchowski, emerges from a vast array of books, essays, and other texts written after it ceased to exist. Still, few could have surmised that the much-prophesized dissolution of the Dual Monarchy in 1918, along with the death in 1916 of its esteemed leader, Emperor Francis Joseph, would have resonated in such deep and lasting ways with a diverse range of Central Europeans, among them some of its best-known and celebrated writers and historians. That a country widely acknowledged to have been both doomed and backward nevertheless managed to capture the minds and imaginations of Austrian, Hungarian, Polish, and Czech authors alike is the central paradox examined in Kozuchowski's 2013 study, originally published in Polish in 2009. His revised, translated English version offers a fresh perspective on the development of what the author calls Austria-Hungary's surprising “afterlife.” Kozuchowski seeks to find who, exactly, perpetuated the image of the Dual Monarchy in the first two decades after its demise, and why they chose to immortalize a state whose demise was predicted by so many and, at the time, mourned by so few.

Although conceding that interest in the Habsburg monarchy has only grown with time, Kozuchowski wisely limits the scope of his study to former citizens who wrote about its legacy relatively soon after its demise, but before the cataclysm of World War II. It was during the tumultuous interwar years, claims Kozuchowski, that Austria-Hungary should have been forgotten rather than remembered; it was far too conservative and aristocratic for advocates of Western-style democracy, much too liberal and tolerant for adherents of Hitler and Mussolini, and all of the above for followers of Lenin and Stalin. Nevertheless, some of the most emotional, passionate, and popular writing about Austria-Hungary stems from a diverse array of interwar authors of history, political writing, and literature.

To be sure, the most well-known, popular writings about the Dual Monarchy stem from fiction by illustrious writers such as Robert Musil, Joseph Roth, Hermann Broch, and Stefan Zweig, a point conceded by Kozuchowski: “Disappointed with history, disgusted with politics, and frustrated with the economy, many post-Austro-Hungarian writers located their lost motherland outside of these spheres, refusing to view it as an ordinary state like so many others, and imagining it as a model country, whose existence was primarily spiritual” (117). But one of this book's strengths is its interdisciplinary approach to addressing its own central paradox. Instead of remaining on only one side of the line typically dividing reality-based history from imagination-inspired literature, Kozuchowski recognizes the constructed nature of both genres and successfully places them in dialogue with each other, asserting that historians, political theorists, and fiction writers alike all share responsibility for the image of the Habsburg monarchy. As he aptly notes, “As far as the transfer of concepts, ideas, and particular intellectual obsessions is concerned, the borders between genres mattered much less for the discourse on Austria-Hungary than ideological and national divisions” (5). Accordingly, the first three chapters group texts according to genre: the first focuses on historiography, the second on political tracts and essays, and the third on literary fiction. Chapter four concerns the image of the monarchy in texts focusing on Emperor Francis Joseph, a figure whose heavy symbolic weight and actions span several genres and require their own chapter.

The book is also noteworthy for its consideration of well-known German-language works, such as Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities and Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March, alongside those by Polish and Czech authors, including Jaroslav Hašek's popular acerbic critique of the Dual Monarchy, The Good Soldier Švejk. Kozuchowski's analyses of these texts help reveal the degree to which an author's ethnic or national affiliation affected the portrayal of Austria-Hungary and its demise. These readings support his conclusion that: “Identity, mostly correlated with nationality, seems to have been the most important single factor determining attitudes toward Austria-Hungary” (173). However, Kozuchowski's analyses would have been strengthened with more support from the vast array of scholarship that already exists on many of these works, much of which covers the texts' and authors' relationship to the Dual Monarchy and contains nuanced discussions that include issues extending beyond national self-identification, such as gender and class. The fact that the book mentions only one text authored by a woman—a memoir written by Lydia Harnik, a Jew born in Bukovina—is a considerable weakness. Women writers abounded in the interwar period: if they did not address the issue of the dissolved monarchy, this study might have asked why.

Finally, although comparing the works of writers such as Elias Canetti, Stefan Zweig, A. F. Pribram, and Josef Redlich with those by non-Jewish Polish and Czech writers certainly provides original and helpful context, Kozuchowski's analyses tend either to downplay or outright elide the extent to which these authors' Jewish backgrounds mattered to their own perspectives. Although Kozuchowski does take care to mention that Jews counted among the most ardent admirers of both the Dual Monarchy and Emperor Francis Joseph, he does not adequately follow through on those implications, although doing so would have directly addressed his central inquiry about who wrote most passionately about the Dual Monarchy and why. Nonetheless, the book remains a valuable, original take on a much-documented subject.