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Stefan's Zweig's Letter from an
Unknown Woman and other stories contains a new
translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell of one of
his most celebrated novellas, Letter from an Unknown
Woman , the inspiration for a classic 1948 Hollywood
film by Max Ophüls, as well as three new stories,
appearing in English for the first time.
A
famous author receives a letter on his forty-first
birthday. He doesn't know the sender, but still the
letter concerns him intimately. Its story is earnest,
even piteous: the story of a life lived in service to an
unannounced, unnoticed love.
In the other stories in
this collection, a young man mistakes the girl he loves
for her sister; two erstwhile lovers meet after an age
spent apart; and a married woman repays a debt of
gratitude. All four tales, newly translated by the
award-winning Anthea Bell, are among Zweig's most
celebrated and compelling work—expertly paced, laced
with empathy and an unwaveringly acute sense of
psychological
detail.
Contents
Letter
from an Unknown Woman (Brief einer Unbekannten)
A
Story Told in Twilight (Geschichte in der
Dämmerung)
The Debt Paid Late (Die spät bezahlte
Schuld)
Forgotten Dreams (Vergessene
Träume)
'Stefan Zweig's time of oblivion is
over for good... it's good to have him back '
—
Salman Rushdie, The New York
Times
Stefan Zweig (1[zasłonięte]881-19)
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.
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