Book description
Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde in Zweig's posthumous classic,
available here in English for the first time.
Christine
toils in a provincial post office in Austria just after World War One,
a country gripped by unemployment. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives
from her rich American aunt inviting Christine to a resort in the
Swiss Alps. Immediately she is swept up into a world of inconceivable
wealth and unleashed desire. She feels herself utterly transformed:
nothing is impossible. But then, abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose and
Christine is forced to return to the Post office where nothing will
ever be the same.
In this haunting yet compassionate reworking of the Cinderella
story, Zweig shows us the human cost of the boom and bust of
capitalism. The Post Office Girl was completed during the 1930s as
Zweig was driven by the Nazis into exile, and was found among his
papers after his suicide in 1942. It is available here for the first
time in English.
'Zweig is one of the masters of the
short story and novella, and by 'one of the masters' I mean that he's
up there with Maupassant, Checkhov, James, Poe or indeed anyone you
care to name.' Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian.
