Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), novelist, biographer, poet, and
translator, was born in Vienna into a wealthy Austrian Jewish
family. During the 1930s, he was one of the best-selling writers in
Europe, and was among the most translated German-language writers
before the Second World War. With the rise of Nazism, he moved from
Salzburg to London (taking British citizenship), to New York, and
finally to Brazil, where he committed suicide with his wife. New
York Review Books has published Zweig’s novels The Post-Office
Girl and Beware of Pity as well as the
novella Chess Story.
Peter Gay is Director of the Center for Scholars and Writers at the
New York Public Library. He wrote Schnitzler’s Century: The
Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815–1914.
"[Zweig is a] writer who understands perfectly the life he is
describing, and who has great analytic gifts . . . . He has
achieved the very considerable feat of inventing, in his
description of the game of chess, a metaphor for the terribly grim
game he is playing with his Nazi tormentors . . . the case history
here is no longer that of individuals; it is the case history of
Europe." —Stephen Spender, The New York Review of Books
"Always [Zweig] remains essentially the same, revealing in all . .
. mediums his subtlety of style, his profound psychological
knowledge and his inherent humaneness." —Barthold Fles, The New
Republic
"Zweig possesses a dogged psychological curiosity, a brutal
frankness, a supreme impartiality . . . [a] concentration of
talents." —Herbert Gorman, The New York Times Book Review
"His writing reveals his sympathy for fellow human beings." —Ruth
Franklin, London Review of Books
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