Yesterday I finished reading The King of the Two Sicilies, a novel from 1980 by the acclaimed Polish author Andrzej Kuśniewicz (1904 – 1993).
In essence, the narrative focuses on the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s mobilization in 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Black Hand in Sarajevo, and the start of the monarchy’s war against Serbia (leading, of course, to the general European conflict known as The Great War, or World War I).
Kuśniewicz’s points, masterfully conveyed, include these:
Enduring differences between the empire’s many nationalities (in the novel, Germans, Croats, Hungarians and Roma) ultimately were a source of fatal fissures
Dating to the battle of Solferino and the subsequent establishment of Italy, Austria-Hungary generally lost any war it entered, perhaps because the hidebound royal apparatus made modernization almost impossible
Austria-Hungary’s officer corps was an effete and toxic personification of the preceding issues
I won’t bother my readers with the subplot of Emil R. and his sister, although it is important in conveying the obliviousness of the upper classes in Austria.
The novel, which I found moving, reminded me of a walk I took almost 39 years ago while traveling through Hungary, at the time still very much communist.
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In 1987, I found myself in Sopron,...
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