Stefan Zweig

  The post-office girl is Christine, who looks after her ailing mother and toils in a provincial Austrian post office in the years just after the Great War. One afternoon, as she is dozing among the official forms and stamps, a telegraph arrives addressed to her. It is from her rich aunt, who lives in America and writes requesting that Christine join her and her husband in a Swiss Alpine resort. After a dizzying train ride, Christine finds herself at the top of the world, enjoying a life of privilege that she had never imagined. But Christine’s aunt drops her as abruptly as she picked her up, and soon the young woman is back at the provincial post office, consumed with disappointment and bitterness. Then she meets Ferdinand, a wounded but eloquent war veteran who is able to give voice to the disaffection of his generation. Christine’s and Ferdinand’s lives spiral downward, before Ferdinand comes up with a plan which will be either their salvation or their doom. Never before published in English, this extraordinary book is an unexpected and haunting foray into noir fiction by one of the masters of the psychological novel.

Chess Story, also known as The Royal Game, is the Austrian master Stefan Zweig's final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942. It is the only story in which Zweig looks at Nazism, and he does so with characteristic emphasis on the psychological. Travelers by ship from New York to Buenos Aires find that on board with them is the world champion of chess, an arrogant and unfriendly man. They come together to try their skills against him and are soundly defeated. Then a mysterious passenger steps forward to advise them and their fortunes change. How he came to possess his extraordinary grasp of the game of chess and at what cost lie at the heart of Zweig's story. This new translation of Chess Story brings out the work's unusual mixture of high suspense and poignant reflection.

The World of Yesterday, mailed to his publisher a few days before Stefan Zweig took his life in 1942, has become a classic of the memoir genre. Originally titled “Three Lives,” the memoir describes Vienna of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, the world between the two world wars and the Hitler years. Translated from the German by Benjamin W. Huebsch and Helmut Ripperger; with an introduction by Harry Zohn, 34 illustrations, a chronology of Stefan Zweig’s life and a new bibliography, by Randolph Klawiter, of works by and about Stefan Zweig in English. “The best single memoir of Old Vienna by any of the city’s native artists.” — Clive James “A book that should be read by anyone who is even slightly interested in the creative imagination and the intellectual life, the brute force of history upon individual lives, the possibility of culture and, quite simply, what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942.” — The Guardian “It is not so much a memoir of a life as it is the memento of an age.” — The New Republic

This biography of the man Stefan Zweig viewed as "the most perfect Machiavelli of modern times" was written in 1929, before the full impact of Nazism and Stalinism was understood. In this gripping case study of ruthlessness, political opportunism, intrigue, and betrayal, Zweig portrays Minister of Police Joseph Fouché (1759-1820), a "thoroughly amoral personality" whose only goal was political survival and the exercise of power.Zweig traces Fouché's career, beginning with his stint as a math and physics teacher in provincial Catholic schools and evolving into a moderate and then radical legislator. Fouché cultivated every political movement du jour, holding no convictions of his own. After preaching clemency for Louis XVI, Fouché voted to send the King to the guillotine. After writing "the first communist manifesto of modern times" he became a multi-millionaire. He led the brutal repression of an anti-revolutionary movement, earning him the nickname "le mitrailleur (butcher) de Lyon". After serving Robespierre, Fouché engineered his overthrow and rose to Minister of Police under the Directory, which he then helped to overthrow before putting his network of informants in Napoleon’s service as his Minister of Police. After turning against the Emperor, Fouché served the new King Louis XVIII – whose brother he had helped send to the guillotine. Thus, Fouché served the Revolution, the Directory, the First Empire and the Restoration.

In Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman , the dramatic disappearance of the wife of a wealthy businessman from a small hotel on the French Riviera prompts a distinguished English widow to recount her fleeting encounter with a young aristocrat many years before in Monte Carlo. In The Royal Game, a tantalizing encounter takes place between the reigning world chess champion and an unknown passenger on a cruise ship bound for Buenos Aires. The stranger's diffident manner masks his extraordinary ability to challenge the grand master in a game of chess but also conceals his dark and damaged past, the horror of which emerges as the game unfolds.

For the insatiably curious Zweig, travel was both a necessary cultural education and a personal balm for the depression he experienced when rooted in one place for too long. He spent much of his life weaving between the countries of Central Europe, visiting authors and friends and exploring the continent in the heyday of international rail travel. Representing a lifetime’s observations, this collection poignantly presents Zweig’s deep-rooted sentiments about the beauty and lasting cultural importance of the Europe he loved.

A doctor in the Dutch East Indies torn between his medical duty to help and his own mixed emotions; a middle-aged maidservant whose devotion to her master leads her to commit a terrible act; a hotel waiter whose love for an unapproachable aristocratic beauty culminates in an almost lyrical death, and a prisoner-of-war longing to be home again in Russia. In these four stories, Stefan Zweig shows his gift for the acute analysis of emotional dilemmas. His four tragic and moving cameos of the human condition are played out against cosmopolitan and colonial backgrounds in the first half of the twentieth century.

"Вчерашний мир" - последняя книга Стефана Цвейга, исповедь-завещание знаменитого австрийского писателя, созданное в самый разгар Второй Мировой войны в изгнании. Помимо широкой панорамы общественной и культурной жизни Европы первой половины ХХ века, читатель найдет в ней размышления автора о причинах и подоплеке грандиозной человеческой катастрофы, а также, не смотря ни на что, искреннюю надежду и веру в конечную победу разума, добра и гуманизма. "Вчерашнему миру", названному Томасом Манном великой книгой, потребовались многие годы, прежде чем она достигла немецких читателей. Путь этой книги к русскому читателю оказался гораздо сложнее и занял в общей сложности пять десятилетий. В настоящем издании впервые на русском языке публикуется автобиография переводчика Геннадия Ефимовича Кагана "Вчерашний мир сегодня", увлекательная повесть о жизни, странным образом перекликающейся с книгой Стефана Цвейга, над переводом которой Геннадий Ефимович работал не один год и ещё больше времени пытался его опубликовать на территории СССР.

Самобытный, сильный и искренний талант австрийского писателя Стефана Цвейга (1881–1942) давно завоевал признание и любовь читательской аудитории. Интерес к его лучшим произведениям с годами не ослабевает, а напротив, неуклонно растет, и это свидетельствует о том, что Цвейгу удалось внести свой, весьма значительный вклад в сложную и богатую художественными открытиями литературу XX века. Рассказчик плывет на большом океанском пароходе из Нью-Йорка в Буэнос-Айрес, на борту он узнает, что вместе с ним в Буэнос-Айрес отправляется Мирко Чентович – чемпион мира по шахматам... Читателю нет необходимости даже знать, как ходят фигуры. Ему предлагается окунуться в мир вечной игры - ее историю, психологию, философию... Он ощутит аромат различных эпох...

A obra publicada pela primeira vez em 1941 tornou-se rapidamente um clássico. Brasil, um país do futuro é um grande retrato do país sob a ótica de um estrangeiro que passou seus últimos anos de vida no Rio de Janeiro. Stefan Zweig e sua segunda mulher, Lotte, escolheram o Brasil como refúgio às atrocidades que eram cometidas na Europa durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Porém, neste período, Zweig não abandonou a escrita. Pelo contrário, foi na casa de Petrópolis que finalizou sua autobiografia (O mundo que eu vi) e escreveu este que, de acordo com Alberto Dines, “é o mais famoso de todos os textos que se escreveram sobre o Brasil”. Resultado de uma extensa pesquisa aliada ao olhar crítico de Zweig, Brasil, um país do futuro é uma obra que surpreende os leitores contemporâneos pela riqueza dos temas abordados. De fato, algumas das previsões feitas por Zweig não se concretizaram, mas o livro não se trata apenas disso. Zweig pensa no futuro analisando o que vê e o que sente do contato com o povo brasileiro. No capítulo “Olhar sobre São Paulo”, por exemplo, reflete que “para representar a cidade de São Paulo seria preciso ser um pintor. Para descrever São Paulo, um estatístico ou um economista (...), pois não é o passado ou o presente que tornam São Paulo uma cidade tão fascinante, e sim o seu crescimento e o seu porvir, a rapidez de sua transformação, vistos em câmera lenta.” Zweig conduz o leitor a passeios pela Bahia, pelo Recife, pelos morros do Rio de Janeiro, observa hábitos da cultura brasileira que se destacam aos olhos estrangeiros, como o simples fato de sempre haver um café fresco para receber um visitante. Além desses dados pitorescos, o autor se aprofunda em uma análise sobre a história e a economia brasileiras, fazendo com que este livro seja, ao mesmo tempo, um documento histórico, uma crônica, um registro de impressões escrito pelas mãos de um célebre autor europeu que se impressionou e se emocionou com o que viu.

The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was a master anatomist of the deceitful heart, and Beware of Pity, the only novel he published during his lifetime, uncovers the seed of selfishness within even the finest of feelings. Hofmiller, an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer stationed at the edge of the empire, is invited to a party at the home of a rich local landowner, a world away from the dreary routine of his barracks. The surroundings are glamorous, wine flows freely, and the exhilarated young Hofmiller asks his host's lovely daughter for a dance, only to discover that sickness has left her painfully crippled. It is a minor blunder, yet one that will go on to destroy his life, as pity and guilt gradually implicate him in a well-meaning but tragically wrongheaded plot to restore the unhappy invalid to health. "Stefan Zweig was a dark and unorthodox artist; it's good to have him back." —Salman Rushdie

The Royal Game crackles with suspense; it is the story of a man who outwits the Gestapo and finds the courage to go on living. Whilst in prison, he finds sanctuary in "imaginary" chess, but later on engages in a confrontation with the chess prodigy of the day.

A deep study of the uneasy heart by one of the masters of the psychological novel, Journey into the Past, published here for the first time in America, is a novella that was found among Zweig’s papers after his death. Investigating the strange ways in which love, in spite of everything - time, war, betrayal - can last, Zweig tells the story of Ludwig, an ambitious young man from a modest background who falls in love with the wife of his rich employer. His love is returned, and the couple vow to live together, but then Ludwig is dispatched on business to Mexico, and while he is there the First World War breaks out. With travel and even communication across the Atlantic now shut down, Ludwig makes a new life in the New World. Years later, however, he returns to Germany to find his beloved a widow and their mutual attraction as strong as ever. But is it possible for love to survive precisely as the impossible?

An epic chess match on a transatlantic liner unearths a story of persecution and obsession. One of the most perfectly gripping novellas from a master of the form, Stefan Zweig. Chess world champion Mirko Czentovic is travelling on an ocean liner to Buenos Aires. Dull-witted in all but chess, he entertains himself on board by allowing others to challenge him in the game, before beating each of them and taking their money. But there is another passenger with a passion for chess: Dr B, previously driven to insanity during Nazi imprisonment by the chess games in his imagination. But in agreeing to take on Czentovic, what price will Dr B ultimately pay? A moving portrait of one man's madness, A Chess Story is a searing examination of the power of the mind and the evil it can do. "The rediscovery of this extraordinary writer could well be on a par with last year's refinding of the long-lost Stoner, by John Williams, and which similarly could pluck his name out of a dusty obscurity." - Simon Winchester, Telegraph "Perhaps the best chess story ever written, perhaps the best about any game. Never mind that you may have never moved a pawn to King four; the story will grip you." - Economist "His great achievement in short form" - The Times A staunch pacifist after his time in the Ministry of War during the First World War, Stefan Zweig was, at his peak, one of the bestselling and most widely acclaimed authors in the world. Following Hitler's rise to power, he and his second wife fled Austria; first to England, then to America, and finally, in 1940, they travelled together to Brazil, where the couple took an overdose and died. Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.