Book description
Written as both a recollection of the past, and as a warning for
future generations, The World of Yesterday recalls the golden age of
literary Vienna; its seeming permanence, its promise and its
devastating fall. Surrounded by the leading literary lights of the
epoch, Zweig draws a vivid and intimate account of his life and
travels through Vienna, Paris, Berlin and London, touching upon the
heart of European culture. His passionate, evocative prose paints a
stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the edge of
extinction. This new translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell
captures the spirit of Zweig's writing in arguably his most revealing work.
"The World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the
twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved,
as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed." DAVID
HARE "This absolutely extraordinary book is more than just an
autobiography. (...) This is 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. That should cover a fair number of you."
NICHOLAS LEZARD "The World of Yesterday is ostensibly an
autobiography but in truth it is much more than that. In this remarkably
fine new translation, Anthea Bell perfectly captures Stefan Zweig's
glorious evocation of a lost world, Vienna's golden age, in which he
grew up and flourished." RONALD HARWOOD 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, then
as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the
wars, and enjoyed 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 bed
in an apparent double suicide.
