Set in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, these early works now published in English for the first time, show that from the beginning of his literary career, Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was already a master of both the short story and his favored fictional form, the novella. In the shorter pieces, the upper-class intellectual Zweig renders with sympathy some of life s a slow student driven to violence; two ridiculed factory workers; a prostitute longing for love. Yet his keen perception and wry wit allow him to sidestep the sentimental and arrive at tender yet stark portrayals. The two novellas, 'The Love of Erika Ewald' and 'Scarlet Fever,' follow the travails of characters closer in temperament and upbringing to Zweig s own. The first concerns a young pianist whose delicate nature interferes with her sensual fulfillment; the second, a gentle medical student struggling to adjust himself to the city s harsh realities. In these portraits, Zweig presents a theme that would figure not only in his later fiction but also in his own life as a Jewish writer in the Nazi the plight of highly sensitive souls in a crude and uncaring world. - Content - A Loser - Two Lonely Ones- The Love of Erika Ewald - Spring in the Prater - Scarlet Fever.
Author
Stefan Zweig was one of the world's most famous writers during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the U.S., South America, and Europe. He produced novels, plays, biographies, and journalist pieces. Among his most famous works are Beware of Pity, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. He and his second wife committed suicide in 1942. Zweig studied in Austria, France, and Germany before settling in Salzburg in 1913. In 1934, driven into exile by the Nazis, he emigrated to England and then, in 1940, to Brazil by way of New York. Finding only growing loneliness and disillusionment in their new surroundings, he and his second wife committed suicide. Zweig's interest in psychology and the teachings of Sigmund Freud led to his most characteristic work, the subtle portrayal of character. Zweig's essays include studies of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Drei Meister, 1920; Three Masters) and of Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, and Friedrich Nietzsche (Der Kampf mit dem Dämon, 1925; Master Builders). He achieved popularity with Sternstunden der Menschheit (1928; The Tide of Fortune), five historical portraits in miniature. He wrote full-scale, intuitive rather than objective, biographies of the French statesman Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935), and others. His stories include those in Verwirrung der Gefühle (1925; Conflicts). He also wrote a psychological novel, Ungeduld des Herzens (1938; Beware of Pity), and translated works of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Emile Verhaeren. Most recently, his works provided the inspiration for 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel.
