{"product_id":"the-collected-stories-of-stefan-zweig-isbn-9781805331827","title":"The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig","description":"In this magnificent collection of Stefan Zweig's short stories the very best and worst of human nature are captured with sharp observation, understanding and vivid empathy. Ranging from love and death to faith restored and hope regained, these stories present a master at work, at the top of his form. Perfectly paced and brimming with passion, these twenty-two tales from a master storyteller of the Twentieth Century are translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDeluxe, clothbound edition.\"a comparison between Bell’s English rendering and the original German reveals that she rarely deviates from Zweig’s language—and when she does, it is in pursuit of the aesthetic and psychological spirit of the original over artless mechanical accuracy. . . Zweig is at once the literary heir of Chekhov, Conrad, and Maupassant, with something of Schopenhauer’s observational meditations on psychology thrown in. The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig is a major book of cultural and historical importance, and Pushkin Press has done the literary world a service by releasing it in such an attractive volume.\" \u003cb\u003e— Okla Elliott, \u003ci\u003eThe Harvard Review Online\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What did Zweig have that brought him the fanatical devotion of millions of readers, the admiration of Herman Hesse, the invitation to give the eulogy at the funeral of Sigmund Freud? To learn that, we would have to have a biography that illuminated \u003ci\u003eall\u003c\/i\u003e aspects of his work, that read \u003ci\u003eall\u003c\/i\u003e of his books, and that challenged, rather than accepted, the apparent modesty of his statements about his life and work.” \u003cb\u003e– Benjamin Moser, \u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e“Amok\u003c\/i\u003e, a 1922 novella (recently reissued in Pushkin Press’s \u003ci\u003eCollected Stories\u003c\/i\u003e, translated by Anthea Bell). . . is quintessentially Zweig, masterful in generating suspense, operatically predictable (the woman always dies in Act Four, so the man has a story to tell in Act Five), and drenched in the implicit mores of the day, which Zweig tweaked in his modest fashion by depicting a clean abortion as a better option than a coat hanger. . . . \u003ci\u003eAmok\u003c\/i\u003e is a compelling story: for its meticulous portrait of the doctor’s emotional process, its compression, and the almost identically sharp observations of gestures, movements, the charged silences in a conversation.” \u003cb\u003e– Gary Indiana, \u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"For far too long, our links with Zweig, all too readily consigned to the dustbin of literary history, have been broken. Pushkin Press’s phenomenal, heartbreaking collection is a reminder that it’s time to forge them again.\" \u003cb\u003e- Tara Burton, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"With each story there is a plea for help, a flicker of hope and an ultimate betrayal.\" \u003cb\u003e- \u003ci\u003eThe New York Daily News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"And thanks to Anthea Bell, who has brought us the beautiful translations of W. G. Sebald, we now have many of the books that made Zweig the Updike of his time, from the novel \u003ci\u003eBeware of Pity\u003c\/i\u003e to his memoir and now \u003ci\u003eThe Collected Stories\u003c\/i\u003e, a fat, orange volume that brings together several dozen of the short works upon which Zweig’s reputation rested in his heyday.\" \u003cb\u003e- \u003ci\u003eNew York Observer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The Collected Stories of Stephan Zweig [is] 720 pages of pure surprise and I’m grateful to the Pushkin Press for bringing it out and helping me to figure out why I’ve been hearing that name for so many years, and finally delving in. You won’t regret it you do too.\" \u003cb\u003e- Eric Alterman, \u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories. They have an astringency of outlook and a mastery of scale that I find enormously enjoyable.\" - \u003cb\u003eEdmund de Waal, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Hare with the Amber Eyes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[T]he time has come for Zweig to enter into America’s literary conversation.\" \u003cb\u003e- \u003ci\u003eFlavorwire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"One hardly knows where to begin in praising Zweig's work.\" - \u003cb\u003eAli Smith\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Zweig belongs with those masters of the novella-Maupassant, Turgenev, Chekhov.\" -\u003cb\u003ePaul Bailey\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"One of the masters of the short story.\" - \u003cb\u003eNicholas Lezard, \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The stories are as page-turning as they are subtle... Compelling.\" - \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eGuardian\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Touching and delightful. Those adjectives are not meant as faint praise. Zweig may be especially appealing now because rather than being a progenitor of big ideas, he was a serious entertainer, and an ardent and careful observer of habits, foibles, passions and mistakes.\" \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e— \u003c\/i\u003eA.O. Scott,\u003ci\u003e The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Stefan Zweig... was a talented writer\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eand ultimately another tragic victim of wartime despair. This rich collection... confirms how good he could be.\" - \u003cb\u003eEileen Battersby, \u003ci\u003eIrish Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eStefan Zweig was born in 1881 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. Between the wars, Zweig was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including \u003ci\u003eLetter from an Unknown Woman\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Amok\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e Fear\u003c\/i\u003e. In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he left Austria, and lived in London, Bath and New York—a period during which he produced his most celebrated works: his only novel, \u003ci\u003eBeware of Pity\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eand his memoir, \u003ci\u003eThe World of Yesterday.\u003c\/i\u003e He eventually settled in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.Forgotten Dreams\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The villa lay close to the sea.\u003cbr\u003e The quiet avenues, lined with pine trees, breathed out the\u003cbr\u003e rich strength of salty sea air, and a slight breeze constantly played\u003cbr\u003e around the orange trees, now and then removing a colourful bloom\u003cbr\u003e from flowering shrubs as if with careful fingers. The sunlit distance,\u003cbr\u003e where attractive houses built on hillsides gleamed like white pearls,\u003cbr\u003e a lighthouse miles away rose steeply and straight as a candle—the\u003cbr\u003e whole scene shone, its contours sharp and clearly outlined, and was\u003cbr\u003e set in the deep azure of the sky like a bright mosaic. The waves of\u003cbr\u003e the sea, marked by only the few white specks that were the distant\u003cbr\u003e sails of isolated ships, lapped against the tiered terrace on which\u003cbr\u003e the villa stood; the ground then rose on and on to the green of a\u003cbr\u003e broad, shady garden and merged with the rest of the park, a scene\u003cbr\u003e drowsy and still, as if under some fairy-tale enchantment.\u003cbr\u003e Outside the sleeping house on which the morning heat lay heavily,\u003cbr\u003e a narrow gravel path ran like a white line to the cool viewing point.\u003cbr\u003e The waves tossed wildly beneath it, and here and there shimmering\u003cbr\u003e spray rose, sparkling in rainbow colours as brightly as diamonds\u003cbr\u003e in the strong sunlight. There the shining rays of the sun broke on\u003cbr\u003e the small groups of Vistulian pines standing close together, as if\u003cbr\u003e in intimate conversation, they also fell on a Japanese parasol with\u003cbr\u003e amusing pictures on it in bright, glaring colours, now open wide.\u003cbr\u003e A woman was leaning back in a soft basket chair in the shade of\u003cbr\u003e this parasol, her beautiful form comfortably lounging in the yielding\u003cbr\u003e weave of the wicker. One slender hand, wearing no rings, dangled\u003cbr\u003e down as if forgotten, petting the gleaming, silky coat of a dog with\u003cbr\u003e gentle, pleasing movements, while the other hand held a book on\u003cbr\u003e which her dark eyes, with their black lashes and the suggestion of\u003cbr\u003e a smile in them, were concentrating. They were large and restless\u003cbr\u003e eyes, their beauty enhanced by a dark, veiled glow. Altogether the\u003cbr\u003e strong, attractive effect of the oval, sharply outlined face did not\u003cbr\u003e give the natural impression of simple beauty, but expressed the\u003cbr\u003e refinement of certain details tended with careful, delicate coquetry.\u003cbr\u003e The apparently unruly confusion of her fragrant, shining curls\u003cbr\u003e was the careful construction of an artist, and in the same way the\u003cbr\u003e slight smile that hovered around her lips as she read, revealing her\u003cbr\u003e white teeth, was the result of many years of practice in front of\u003cbr\u003e the mirror, but had already become a firmly established part of the\u003cbr\u003e whole design and could not be laid aside now.\u003cbr\u003e There was a slight crunch on the sand.\u003cbr\u003e She looks without changing her position, like a cat lying basking\u003cbr\u003e in the dazzling torrent of warm sunlight and merely blinking\u003cbr\u003e apathetically at the newcomer with phosphorescent eyes.\u003cbr\u003e The steps quickly come closer, and a servant in livery stands in\u003cbr\u003e front of her to hand her a small visiting card, then stands back a\u003cbr\u003e little way to wait.\u003cbr\u003e She reads the name with that expression of surprise on her\u003cbr\u003e features that appears when you are greeted in the street with great\u003cbr\u003e familiarity by someone you do not know. For a moment, small lines\u003cbr\u003e appear above her sharply traced black eyebrows, showing how hard\u003cbr\u003e she is thinking, and then a happy light plays over her whole face all\u003cbr\u003e of a sudden, her eyes sparkle with high spirits as she thinks of the\u003cbr\u003e long-ago days of her youth, almost forgotten now. The name has\u003cbr\u003e aroused pleasant images in her again. Figures and dreams take on\u003cbr\u003e distinct shape once more, and become as clear as reality.\u003cbr\u003e “Ah, yes,” she said as she remembered, suddenly turning to the\u003cbr\u003e servant, “yes, of course show the gentleman up here.”\u003cbr\u003e The servant left, with a soft and obsequious tread. For a moment\u003cbr\u003e there was silence except for the never-tiring wind singing softly in\u003cbr\u003e the treetops, now full of the heavy golden midday light.\u003cbr\u003e Then vigorous, energetic footsteps were heard on the gravel path,\u003cbr\u003e a long shadow fell at her feet, and a tall man stood before her. She\u003cbr\u003e had risen from her chair with a lively movement.\u003cbr\u003e Their eyes met first. With a quick glance he took in the elegance\u003cbr\u003e of her figure, while a slight ironic smile came into her eyes. “It’s\u003cbr\u003e really good of you to have thought of me,” she began, offering him\u003cbr\u003e her slender and well-tended hand, which he touched respectfully\u003cbr\u003e with his lips.\u003cbr\u003e “Dear lady, I will be honest with you, since this is our first\u003cbr\u003e meeting for years, and also, I fear, the last for many years to come.\u003cbr\u003e It is something of a coincidence that I am here; the name of the\u003cbr\u003e owner of the castle about which I was enquiring because of its\u003cbr\u003e magnificent position recalled you to my mind. So I am really here\u003cbr\u003e under false pretences.”\u003cbr\u003e “But nonetheless welcome for that, and in fact I myself could\u003cbr\u003e not remember your existence at first, although it was once of some\u003cbr\u003e significance to me.”","brand":"Pushkin Press Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304112083173,"sku":"NP9781805331827","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781805331827.jpg?v=1767738736","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-collected-stories-of-stefan-zweig-isbn-9781805331827","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}