About the Author

Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was born in Vienna, into 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 was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear. In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he moved to London, where he wrote his only novel Beware of Pity. He later moved on to Bath, taking British citizenship after the outbreak of the Second World War. With the fall of France in 1940 Zweig left Britain for New York, before settling in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide.

Reviews

Gems of literary perfection. I felt I had seldom read such lucid, liquid prose Simon Winchester, Telegraph Shooting Stars forms part of an ambitious project by Pushkin Press to bring Zweig's work to the attention of the English-reading public, an enterprise that has been entirely successful. Zweigmania seems to break out with the publication of each book, with readers discovering his work by word-of-mouth and by accident. Guardian The perfect stocking-filler for the Europhile in your life Philosophy Football A source of great pleasure, even enlightenment Jewish Quarterly Pacey and animated The Herald