Book description
This new selection of novellas, translated by the award-winning
Anthea Bell, begins with Did He Do It? A curious whodunit set in
England, it nonetheless has the extraordinary psychological insight
that typifies Zweig's best work. The Miracles of Life explores the
conflicting forces of belief and art, love and obsession, amidst the
religious struggles of Renaissance Antwerp. Finally, two Viennese
stories, The Governess and Downfall of the Heart are shattering in
their portrayal of disillusionmentÂ-two little girls move from cosy
chidlhood to the cold glare of adulthood in a single morning, and a
father's heart breaks irrevocably. Wide-ranging and compelling, this
is another brilliant collection of stories from Austria's rediscovered
master of twentieth-century European literature.
Stefan Zweig: Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member
of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna
and was first known as a poet and translator, and later as a
biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the
wars, and enjoying literary fame. His stories and novellas were
collected in 1934. In the same year, with
the rise of Nazism, he
briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short
period in New York, he settled in Brazil where in 1942 he and
his
wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide.
Anthea Bell: ANTHEA BELL is the recipient of the Schlegel Tieck
Prize for translation from German, the Independent Foreign Fiction
Prize, and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize in 2002 for the translation
of W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz, and the 2003 Austrian State Prize for
Literary Translation. She lives in Cambridge, England.
