Stefan Zweig's memoir The World of Yesterday, (Die Welt von Gestern) is a unique love letter to the lost world of pre-war Europe The famous autobiography is published by Pushkin Press, with a cover designed by David Pearson and Clare Skeats. Translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell.

Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday recalls the golden age of pre- war Europe its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall. Through the story of his life, and his relationships with the leading literary figures of the day, Zweig s passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction.

This new translation by the award- winning Anthea Bell captures the spirit of Zweig's writing in arguably his most important work, completed shortly before his death in a suicide pact with his wife in 1942.

The World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed.'— David Hare

'This absolutely extraordinary book is more than just an autobiography. (...) This is a book that should be read by anyone who is even slightly interested in the creative imagination and the intellectual life, the brute force of history upon individual lives, the possibility of culture and, quite simply, what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942. That should cover a fair number of you.'— Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

Translated from the German by Anthea Bell, Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday, is published by Pushkin Press.

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.

Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.

"Stefan Zweig's brilliant novel, Beware of Pity, is an original and powerful work."—The New York Times

The 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. Beware of Pity is an almost unbearably tense and powerful tale of unrequited love and the danger of pity. 

In 1913, Hofmiller, 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.

Stefan Zweig's only novel is a devastating depiction of the torment of the betrayal of both honour and love, realised against the background of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

'The novel I'll really remember reading this year is Stefan Zweig's frighteningly gripping Beware of Pity, first published in 1939 ... an intoxicating, morally shaking read about human responsibilities and a real reminder of what fiction can do best' –Times Literary Supplement

About the author

Stefan Zweig (1881—1942) was an Austrian novelist, poet, playwright and biographer. Born into an Austrian-­Jewish family in 1881, he became a leading figure in Vienna’s cultural world and was famed for his gripping novellas and  biographies. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular writers in the world: extremely popular in the United States, South America and Europe – he remains so in continental Europe – however, he was largely ignored by the British public.

Zweig is best known for his novellas (notably The Burning Secret, The Royal Game, Amok, and Letter from an Unknown Woman; novels (Beware of Pity, Confusion, and the post­humously published The Post Office Girl); and his vivid psychological biographical essays on famous writers and thinkers such as Erasmus, Tolstoy, Balzac, Stendhal, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Freud and Mesmer.

In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, Zweig fled from Salzburg to London, then to New York, and finally to Brazil. Zweig’s memoir, The World of Yesterday, was completed in 1942, one day before Zweig and his second wife were found dead, following an apparent double suicide.

'... a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!'

A group of passengers on a cruise ship challenge the world chess champion to a match. At first, they crumble, until they are helped by whispered advice from a stranger in the crowd - a man who will risk everything to win. Stefan Zweig's acclaimed novella Chess is a disturbing, intensely dramatic depiction of obsession and the price of genius.

Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde in Zweig’s posthumous classic, available here in English for the first time.

Christine toils in a provincial post office in Austria just after World War One, a country gripped by unemployment. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from her rich American aunt inviting Christine to a resort in the Swiss Alps. Immediately she is swept up into a world of inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire. She feels herself utterly transformed: nothing is impossible. But then, abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose and Christine is forced to return to the Post office where nothing will ever be the same.

In this haunting yet compassionate reworking of the Cinderella story, Zweig shows us the human cost of the boom and bust of capitalism. The Post Office Girl was completed during the 1930s as Zweig was driven by the Nazis into exile, and was found among his papers after his suicide in 1942. It is available here for the first time in English.

‘Zweig is one of the masters of the short story and novella, and by ‘one of the masters’ I mean that he’s up there with Maupassant, Checkhov, James, Poe or indeed anyone you care to name.’ Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian.

Stefan Zweig's classic biography of one of British history's most fascinating figures, rereleased in a new edition to tie in with launch of the major new Hollywood film Mary Queen of Scots

'Zweig's readability made him one of the most popular writers of the early twentieth century... His lives of Mary Stuart and Marie Antoinette were international bestsellers'
Julie Kavanagh, The Economist Intelligent Life

From the moment of her birth to her death on the scaffold, Mary Stuart spend her life embroiled in power struggles that shook the foundations of Renaissance Europe. Revered by some as the rightful Queen of England, reviled by others as a murderous adulteress, her long and fascinating rivalry with her cousin Elizabeth I led ultimately to her downfall.

This classic biography, by one of the most popular writers of the twentieth century, breathes life into the character of a remarkable woman, and turns her tale into a story of passion and plotting as gripping as any novel.

Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a translator and later as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoying literary fame. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in bed in an apparent double suicide.

Mrs C. se souvient : cette année-là, elle s'ennuyait sur la Côte d'Azur. Au Casino de Monte Carlo, en face d'elle, un jeune homme étrange jouait et perdait comme on se noie, comme on se suicide. Elle avait les moyens de le sauver. Elle le suivit dans un hôtel, pour connaître avec lui quelques heures de passion et de folie. Aujourd'hui, le temps a finalement mal cicatrisé cette journée particulière, la plus imprévisible et inoubliable de toute sa vie...


Ce texte est suivi de
Le voyage dans le passé
, une nouvelle retrouvée en intégralité après la mort de Stefan Zweig et publiée en France pour la première fois en 2008. L'amour peut-il résister à une longue séparation, à des trahisons, à l'usure des années ? On y retrouve toute la profondeur de l'auteur et son génie du suspense psychologique.



Nouvelle traduction de l'allemand par Pierre Malherbet