| Synopsis: |
Perfectly paced and brimming with passion-twenty-two tales from a master storyteller of the twentieth century.In this magnificent collection of Stefan Zweig's short stories the very best and worst of human nature are captured with sharp observation, understanding and vivid empathy. Ranging from love and death to faith restored and hope regained, these stories present a master at work, at the top of his form.Translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell'Zweig, prolific storyteller and embodiment of a vanished Mitteleuropa, seems to be back, and in a big way.' The New York Times'For far too long, our links with Zweig... have been broken. Pushkin Press's phenomenal, heartbreaking collection is a reminder that it's time to forge them again.'Los Angeles Review of Books'One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories. They have an astringency of outlook and a mastery of scale that I find enormously enjoyable' Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes'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' Simon Winchester Telegraph'The Updike of his day... Zweig is a lucid writer, and Bell renders his prose flawlessly' New York Observer'Zweig belongs with those masters of the novella-Maupassant, Turgenev, Chekhov.'-Paul Bailey'The stories are as page-turning as they are subtle... Compelling' Guardian'An unjustly neglected literary master'The Times[A] new omnibus edition of Zweig's stories, in Anthea Bell's flawlessly pitched translations" TLS'One of the masters of theshort story' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian'Stefan Zweig... was a talented writer and ultimatelyanother tragic victim of wartime despair. This rich collection... confirms howgood he could be' Eileen Battersby, IrishTimes'Zweig is at once the literary heir of Chekhov, Conrad, and Maupassant, with something of Schopenhauer's observational meditations on psychology thrown in. The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig is a major book of cultural and historical importance, and Pushkin Press has done the literary world a service by releasing it in such an attractive volume.' Harvard ReviewStefan Zweig (1881-1942) was born in Vienna, into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear. In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he moved to London, where he wrote his only novel Beware of Pity. He later moved on to Bath, taking British citizenship after the outbreak of the Second World War. With the fall of France in 1940 Zweig left Britain for New York, before settling in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.Pushkin Press's special hardbacks also include deluxe editions of Stefan Zweig's Beware of Pity and Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight. |