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The World of Yesterday by [Stefan Zweig, B. W. Huebsch, Helmut Ripperger]

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Stefan Zweig

The World of Yesterday Kindle Edition

by Stefan Zweig (Author), B. W. Huebsch (Translator), Helmut Ripperger (Translator) Format: Kindle Edition

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This Plunkett Lake Press eBook is produced by arrangement with Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

The World of Yesterday, mailed to his publisher a few days before Stefan Zweig took his life in 1942, has become a classic of the memoir genre. Originally titled “Three Lives,” the memoir describes Vienna of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, the world between the two world wars and the Hitler years.

Translated from the German by Benjamin W. Huebsch and Helmut Ripperger; with an introduction by Harry Zohn, 34 illustrations, a chronology of Stefan Zweig’s life and a new bibliography, by Randolph Klawiter, of works by and about Stefan Zweig in English.

“The best single memoir of Old Vienna by any of the city’s native artists.” — Clive James

“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.” — The Guardian

“It is not so much a memoir of a life as it is the memento of an age.” — The New Republic

Print length

497 pages
Language

English
Publication date

4 Sept. 2011
File size

15271 KB
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About the Author

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) was an Austrian novelist, journalist, biographer, and playwright prominent in the 1920s and 1930s. He is the author of several books, including the novels Beware of Pity and Confusion of Feelings and the biography Conqueror of the Seas: The Story of Magellan. Anthea Bell has translated many French, German, Danish, and Polish literary works into English. Her translations include Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoir The Pianist, W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, and numerous works of children's literature. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

“The World of Yesterday is ostensibly an autobiography, but it is much more than that. In this remarkably fine new translation, Anthea Bell perfectly captures Stefan Zweig’s glorious evocation of a lost world, Vienna’s golden age, in which he grew up and flourished.”—Ronald Harwood, award-winning author, playwright, and screenwriter
“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, award–winning playwright and director of film and theater
“The very success with which this book evokes both the beauty of the past and the fatality of its passing is what gives it tragic effectiveness. It is not so much a memoir of a life as it is the memento of an age, and the author seems, in his own phrase, to be the narrator at an illustrated lecture. The illustrations are provided by time, but his choice is brilliant and the narration is evocative.”—New Republic
"The autobiography of the internationally famous biographer and dramatist is a chronicle of three ages: the golden days of Vienna that ended with World War I; that war and its aftermath; and the Hitler years. Three ages do come to life in Zweig's book."—Publishers Weekly
"When I opened it, I immediately felt that rare thrill one experiences when meeting a great book."—Newsday.com
"A searing memoir."—Intelligent Life --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005LY3T4E
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Plunkett Lake Press (4 Sept. 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 15271 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 497 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 173,414 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 61 in History of Austria & Hungary
- 359 in Biographies & Memoirs of Authors
- 1,810 in Biographies on Novelist & Playwrights

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592 ratings

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Stefan Zweig

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Stefan Zweig (/zwaɪɡ, swaɪɡ/; German: [tsvaɪk]; November 28, 1881 in Vienna – February 22, 1942 in Petrópolis) was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular writers in the world.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by s/a [Public domain, GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Andrew of Knapdale

An absorbing historical record.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 May 2017

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Although I haven't yet finished this book I shall be sad when I do because it is a wonderful read. The content fascinates me because I am interested in that period, especially the 15 years before WW1, but it is the quality of the writing and the clarity of the pictures drawn which make it exceptional. As a reasonably wealthy and successful man - and also as a Jew - Zweig was very well placed to observe Europe during that period and took full advantage of his ability to travel, observe, and meet the people who shaped contemporary thinking from relative peace and harmony between Austria, Germany, France and Italy through a period disruption and misery in the 1930s and 1940s.

18 people found this helpful

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Charlie B

Fascinating and Impressive

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 April 2019

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This book has been reviewed positively by much greater minds than mine own and I share the findings and views presented in these earlier reviews. This book which provides a fascinating narrative from the perspectives of the author himself, a well educated Austrian (known for his poetry and fiction), the literary world and from the European level of the period between the latter years of the 19th Century and the mid point of the second world war. It concludes when he feels it necessary to live in Brazil, giving up his Austrian home, due to the violent upheavals in Europe, and having determined on committing suicide.

The book offers hugely interesting insights into the causal factors of the First World War (a great folly resulting from the ineptitude of the political leaders in key European states) and the development of fascism within both Austria and Germany. We are also introduced to many of the great literary figures of the age, amongst them was the author himself, and the context provided by the book helps us to understand the drivers for their work.

This is a very worthwhile read.

6 people found this helpful

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sam_acw

Overwrought, oversold and underwhelming

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 September 2021

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Very slow, and written by a writer so soaked in his own privilege he didn't even notice it. A millionaire's son who easily avoids service in any dangerous capacity during WW1.
He has some interesting asides and stories, but devolves into hero worship of artists who history treats as footnotes. At times his writing about the sexual and social climate before and after WW1 reads exactly like the archetypal 60s radical writing about either side of 1969.
It's interesting if you want to look at the milieu in which central ideas of the 20th and 21st century, like Freud's psychoanalysis and Popper's Open Society, were born. If you want a neatly written or concise book, it's not for you.

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ks chaturvedi

A very fine autobiography

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 March 2015

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dear sir
I was searching the second hand book and i got it in Cassell Biographies. It is very remarkable autobiography and very sad indeed that the author finished his precious life before the Second World War ended. Long before Lord Edward Grey declared at the beginning of Great War ^ The lights of Europe are put out, we shall never see them again in our lifetime.^ He was correct so as Mr Stefan Zweig that culture of the Europe is completely destroyed.
He correctly writes ^There was no protection,no security against being constantly made aware of things and being drawn into them. There was no country to which one could flee , no quiet one could purchase; always and everywhere the hand of fate seized us and dragged us back in its insatiable play.^
The world is remembering the trauma of great war as Centenary has quietly passed. We hope the civilized people would never allow the vision of nuclear Apocalypse come true to destroy the world again and politics should dominate the literature and other fine arts. It is disheartening that no new edition of this fine book was published recently and people knew little about this book and its author.
At last i quote from the book ^Only that which wills to preserve itself has the right to be preserved for others. So choose and speak for me, ye memories, and at least give some reflection of my life before it sinks into the dark!^
I very strongly recommend this fine autobiography to be read by every one who is interested in the history, literature and great authors.

4 people found this helpful

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GELM

Fascinating personal account of European intellectual life at a tragic moment in history.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 April 2018

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Beautifully written chronicle of a society's slide into war and barbarism. Many heart-rending moments, such as the author's last visit to Vienna to see his mother - very movingly conveyed. Only thing that grates at times - the reminders of Zweig's very privileged life and a sense that he laments the loss of that elevated social circle around him more than the masses of the lowly and impoverished, who are also people too. Issues of social class are never far from the central narrative although these are questions with which Zweig never engages, sadly. Still, a very valuable and touching account. Well worth reading.

4 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Excellent period memoir, terrible kindle edition

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 June 2020

Verified Purchase

Although Zweig's writing style will strike many in our own century as decidedly old-fashioned, his is an invaluable memoir of the times he lived in. His evocations of life in Vienna in the 1890s until the post WWI period are excellent, not least owing to the fact that they were written so recently after the events he describes. His accounts of then (then) famous writers he knew and translated and, above all, life as a displaced person are moving. Inexcusable is the way in which the photographic illustrations are distorted (elongated or squashed) and of very poor resolution, even worse than in other kindle books.

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