An NYRB Classics Original Stefan Zweig was particularly drawn to the novella, and Confusion, a rigorous and yet transporting dramatization of the conflict between the heart and the mind, is among his supreme achievements in the form. A young man who is rapidly going to the dogs in Berlin is packed off by his father to a university in a sleepy provincial town. There a brilliant lecture awakens in him a wild passion for learning—as well as a peculiarly intense fascination with the graying professor who gave the talk. The student grows close to the professor, be­coming a regular visitor to the apartment he shares with his much younger wife. He takes it upon himself to urge his teacher to finish the great work of scholarship that he has been laboring at for years and even offers to help him in any way he can. The professor welcomes the young man’s attentions, at least on some days. On others, he rages without apparent reason or turns away from his disciple with cold scorn. The young man is baffled, wounded. He cannot understand. But the wife understands. She understands perfectly. And one way or another she will help him to understand too.

'The most exciting book I have ever read ... a feverish, fascinating novel' Antony Beevor, Sunday Telegraph 'I can't take any more of your revolting merciful kindness!' Who would have thought that the great military hero Captain Hofmiller - that living monument to his own courage - would have anything burdening his soul? But when he reveals his story, it is not one of bravery but tragedy: a simple blunder at a dance from which disaster grows, ruining lives with his weak, foolish pity... Beware of Pity is Stefan Zweig's greatest novel, fiercely capturing human emotions in all their subtleties and extremes - while Hofmiller, his unforgettable, naïve creation, misunderstands everything, resulting in his downfall. Translated by Jonathan Katz. Previously published as Impatience of the Heart.

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) was a poet, novelist, and dramatist, but it was his biographies that expressed his full genius, recreating for his international audience the Elizabethan age, the French Revolution, the great days of voyages and discoveries. In this autobiography he holds the mirror up to his own age, telling the story of a generation that "was loaded down with a burden of fate as was hardly any other in the course of history." Zweig attracted to himself the best minds and loftiest souls of his era: Freud, Yeats, Borgese, Pirandello, Gorky, Ravel, Joyce, Toscanini, Jane Addams, Anatole France, and Romain Rolland are but a few of the friends he writes about.

Austrian writer Stefan Zweig's final work, posted to his publisher the day before his tragic death, brings the destruction of a war-torn Europe vividly to life. Written as both a recollection of the past and a warning for future generations, The World of Yesterday recalls the golden age of literary Vienna; its seeming permanence, its promise, and its devastating fall. A truthful and passionate account of the horror that tore apart European culture, The World of Yesterday gives us insight into the history of a world brutally destroyed, written by a master at the height of his genius.

At the beginning of the century, a small pension on the Riviera. The guests of the establishment are in an uproar: the wife of one of the boarders, Mrs. Henriette, has left with a young man who had only been there one day. Only the narrator defends this morally bankrupt creature. And his only ally is a dry and distinguished old English lady. It is she who, in the course of a long conversation, will explain to him which badly extinguished fires this adventure has rekindled in her

A stunning new edition of a darkly “touching and delightful” tale of seduction, jealousy, and betrayal from the master of the novella (The New York Times) Bored on holiday at an Austrian mountain resort, the suave Baron takes a fancy to twelve-year-old Edgar’s mother. But when his initial advances are rejected, he must turn to other means to carry out his seduction. Instead, he lavishes his attention on Edgar, deploying all of his adult charms and wiles to befriend the boy and get closer to the woman he desires. The initially unsuspecting child soon senses something is amiss, but he has no idea of the burning secret that is driving the affair—and that it will soon change his life forever.

This classic Austrian novella paints a deeply moving portrait of a woman whose quest for passion and purpose comes at a steep price The less I felt in myself, the more strongly I was drawn to those places where the whirligig of life spins most rapidly. So begins an extraordinary day in the life of Mrs C—recently bereaved and searching for excitement and meaning. Drawn to the bright lights of a casino, and the passion of a desperate stranger, she discovers a purpose once again but at what cost? In this vivid and moving tale of a compassionate woman, and her defining experience, Zweig explores the power of intense love, overwhelming loneliness and regret that can last for a lifetime.

Stefan Zweig's Amerigo: A Comedy of Errors in History is the Austrian writer's account of how America got its name. This short, late work describes how Amerigo Vespucci, “a man of medium caliber [who] had never been entrusted with a fleet” gave his name to the New World because “of a combination of circumstances — through error, accident, and misunderstanding.” Zweig was living in exile in Brazil when he wrote Amerigo, shortly before committing suicide in despair over Hitler's conquest of Europe. “The paradox that Columbus discovered America but failed to recognize it, while Vespucci did not discover it but was the first to recognize it as a new continent,” he wrote, illustrates how “history will not be reasoned with.”

A beautiful new edition of this heart-.-rending study of the psychology of love.

It's the 1930s. Christine, a young Austrian woman whose family has been impoverished by the war, toils away in a provincial post office. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from an American aunt she's never known, inviting her to spend two weeks in a Grand Hotel in a fashionable Swiss resort. She accepts and is swept up into a world of almost inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire, where she allows herself to be utterly transformed. Then, just as abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose and she has to return to the post office, where - yes - nothing will ever be the same.