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After reading this book, I was left with a sense of deep melancholy and alienation. This is not to say that the book is depressing - far from it, it is very engaging and penetrates the superficial public image of revolution leaders created and left to us by media, and brings out the real person that remains hidden behind this image.

Referred to as Roth's Trotsky novel, the book loosely borrows from the life of the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky to draw its own central character Friedrich Kargan. Kargan, at a young age gets involved in the revolution, spends time in the Siberian prison after being caught in an attempt to enter Russia to spread his ideas; he escapes and returns to Russia after the revolution to become the leader of the red army. However, after his return, he is perturbed with the growing bureaucratization of his country and realizes that the revolution he was trying to bring was already a dead idea and he already a man belonging to the past generation. Disappointed, he chooses exile to Germany and spends his time in solitude and a discontent that is caused by rootlessness.
Through the writing, Roth has beautifully impounded on the disillusion that follows a great revolution, when all the ideas leading up to a revolution suddenly become extinct in the world after the inflection point arrives. The peak of such a great up-heaving then, is also its nadir and it leaves the leaders of such a revolution to leave gaping and without goals - now that their work is apparently over.
It is also a novel of exile and alienation, bringing to front in Roth's own words as to how it feels on being banished from your own country. It was a feeling that presumably also played largely in his own life after the collapse of the Hapsburg empire where he had been serving in the army. In many ways, Kargan could be said to draw from Roth himself as much as he drew from Trotsky. Perhaps, that is why the words do not sound superimposed and ring with a disturbing reality, not even losing this reality through the translation. The solitude that is present throughout the book, is suddenly confronted by Roth in the chapters of his exile, specially when Kargan falls ill:

He lay alone in his room, in fever's soft delirium, cosseted by solitude for the first time. Till now he had known only its cruel constancy and its obstinate muteness. Now he recognized its gentle friendship and caught the quite melody of its voice. No friend, no loved one and no comrade. Only thoughts came, like children, simultaneously begotten, born and grown

Expressive words with a resounding sincerity. It is of course credit also to the translator, David Le Vay, that the sincerity transpired to the English text as well.
The Editor's note tells me that the manuscript was never revised and prepared for publication during Roth's lifetime - he had apparently shelved his Trotsky novel, even after making 3 diligent drafts. The published text is a result of a laborious and painstaking task of reconstructing the final work by leafing parts of the three drafts together.