Late Fame

Description

One seemingly ordinary evening, Eduard Saxberger arrives home to find the fulfilment of a long-forgotten wish in his sitting room: a visitor has come to tell him that the youth of Vienna have discovered his poetic genius. Saxberger has written nothing for thirty years, yet he now realises that he is more than merely an Unremarkable Civil Servant, after all: a Venerable Poet, for whom Late Fame is inevitable - if, that is, his new acolytes are to be believed. Arthur Schnitzler was one of the most admired, provocative European writers of the twentieth century. The Nazis attempted to burn all of his work, but his archive was miraculously saved, and with it, Late Fame. Never published before, it is a treasure, a perfect satire of literary self-regard and charlatanism.

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was one of the most influential European writers of the twentieth century, perhaps best known to British readers for his novella Dream Story. He qualified as a doctor but was increasingly driven to a career in writing, resulting in celebrated plays, novellas and novels which explore the great existential subjects of the modern age. Ever controversial and ahead of his time, he was close friends with Zweig and Freud, and a member of the 'Young Vienna' circle of writers who regularly met at a caf nicknamed 'Megalomania' - the very same clique and caf he satirises so deliciously in Late Fame. Pushkin Press also publishes Casanova's Return to Venice, Fraulein Else and Dying.

A witty satire that will immerse you in the world of these turn-of-the-century Viennese bohemians The Times Hilarious, unbelievably finely spun and ironic... a great literary discovery Die Zeit Finely balanced between comedy and melancholy... offers a delicious parody of the business of literature and literary events... light-footed and wonderfully ironic Berliner Zeitung What one can learn from this 120-year-old text... is an ironic attitude to oneself and the world. [This] is what makes this novella about the Viennese Modernity a modern text of today Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung I like and admire [Schnitzler] warmly as man and writer -- Stefan Zweig Riveting Neue Zurcher Zeitung Exquisite Frankfurter Rundschau [Late Fame's first ever publication in 2014] is an event for everyone interested in literature Spiegel Online When I read one of your beautiful works I keep finding, behind the fiction, the same propositions, interests and solutions that are familiar to me from my own thoughts -- Sigmund Freud Letter to Schnitzler, May 1922 An overlooked classic Jewish Chronicle