Journey Into The Past

Description

Exiled for nine years by the First World War, Ludwig has finally returned home to meet the woman he so passionately loved, and who promised to wait for him. But circumstances have changed. Confronted with an uncertain future, and still haunted by the past, they discover whether their love has survived hardships, betrayals, and the lapse of time. Zweig's long- -lost final novella-posthumously discovered in manuscript form-is a poignant examination of the angst of nostalgia and the fragility of love.

Stefan 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 Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear. In 1934, with WC 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, Beware of Pity, and his memoir, The World of Yesterday. 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.

Journey into the Past is vintage Stefan Zweig lucid, tender, powerful and compelling -- Chris Schuler The Independent Zweig belongs with three very different masters who each perfected the challenging art of the short story and the novella: Maupassant, Turgenev and Chekhov -- Paul Bailey