{"product_id":"beware-of-pity-isbn-9781590172001","title":"Beware of Pity","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWes Anderson on Stefan Zweig:\u003c\/b\u003e  \"I had never heard of Zweig...when    I just more or less by chance bought a copy of \u003ci\u003eBeware of Pity\u003c\/i\u003e. I loved this    first book.  I also read    the \u003ci\u003eThe Post-Office\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eGirl\u003c\/i\u003e.  \u003ci\u003eThe Grand Budapest Hotel\u003c\/i\u003e has elements that were sort of stolen    from both these books. Two characters in our story are vaguely meant to    represent Zweig himself — our “Author” character, played by Tom Wilkinson,    and the theoretically fictionalised version of himself, played by Jude Law.    But, in fact, M. Gustave, the main character who is played by Ralph Fiennes,    is modelled significantly on Zweig as well.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Stefan Zweig was a dark and unorthodox artist; it's good to have him back.\"--Salman  Rushdie\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was a master anatomist of the deceitful  heart, and Beware of Pity,  the only novel he published during his lifetime, uncovers  the seed of selfishness within even the finest of feelings.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHofmiller, an Austro-Hungarian  cavalry officer stationed at the edge of the empire, is invited to a party at the  home of a rich local landowner, a world away from the dreary routine of the barracks.  The surroundings are glamorous, wine flows freely, and the exhilarated young Hofmiller  asks his host's lovely daughter for a dance, only to discover that sickness has left  her painfully crippled. It is a minor blunder that will destroy his life, as pity  and guilt gradually implicate him in a well-meaning but tragically wrongheaded plot  to restore the unhappy invalid to health.\u003c\/p\u003e\"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeware of Pity\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e, his first venture in longer fiction, is original and powerful work...Zweig has chronicled a hopeless and tragic relationship in a manner that so holds the reader as never to dispirit him, telling a story full of psychological pitfalls that only an experienced writer, and an experienced human being could dare to attempt...Zweig remains, after \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeware of Pity\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e, what he seemed to be--in his novelettes and biographies--before he wrote it: a brilliant writer.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Admired by readers as diverse as Freud, Einstein, Toscanini, Thomas Mann and Herman Goering.\"  --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Herr Zweig presents this story with considerable skill, with compelling force...It is a good story.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What is so impressive about \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeware of Pity\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e is Zweig's ability to make us feel the violently shifting emotions of all his characters as if they were our own.  Only a writer of great sensitivity could do this.  His theme, or moral, which he does not obtrude on us in any clumsy way, is that impulsive pity for others is a dangerous emotion with embroils us in false situations, often with disastrous results.\" --\u003ci\u003eSunday Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeware of Pity\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e is an utterly unsparing dissection of the corruptions of false  pity...In stripping away the lies with which we disguise our true desires from ourselves, Zweig lays bare the larger lies of the age: it was, in fact, the perfect novel for that 'low, dishonest decade,' as Auden termed it.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Sun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eSTEPHAN ZWEIG\u003c\/b\u003e (1881-1942) spent his youth studying philosophy and the history of literature in Vienna and  belonged to a pan-European cultural circle that included Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss.  1n 1934, under National Socialism, Zweig fled Austria for England, where he authored several novels, short stories, and biographies.  In 1941 Zweig and his second wife traveled to Brazil, where they both committed suicide.  New York Review Books recently republished his novel, \u003ci\u003eChess Story,\u003c\/i\u003e in Fall 2005. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJOAN ACOCELLA \u003c\/b\u003eis a staff writer for \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e and contributes regularly to the \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e.  Her latest books is \u003ci\u003eWilla Cather and the Politics of Criticism\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303111708901,"sku":"NP9781590172001","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590172001.jpg?v=1767722509","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/beware-of-pity-isbn-9781590172001","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}