The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig

1
The PartnerTHE SHRILL WHISTLE of the locomotive sounded; the train had reached Semmering. For a moment the black carriages stood still in the silvery light of the heights up here, allowing a motley assortment of passengers to get out and others to board the train. Voices were raised in altercation, then the engine uttered its hoarse cry again and carried the black chain of carriages away, rattling, into the cavernous tunnel. Once again the pure, clear view of the landscape lay spread out, a backdrop swept clean by rain carried on a wet wind.
One of the new arrivals, a young man who drew admiring glances with his good clothes and the natural ease of his gait, was quick to get ahead of the others by taking a cab to his hotel. The horses clip-clopped uphill along the road at their leisure. Spring was in the air. Those white clouds that are seen only in May and June sailed past in the sky, a company clad all in white, still young and flighty themselves, playfully chasing over the blue firmament, hiding suddenly behind high mountains, embracing and separating again, sometimes crumpling up like handkerchiefs, sometimes fraying into shreds, and finally playing a practical joke on the mountains as they settled on their heads like white caps. Up here the wind too was restless as it shook the scanty trees, still wet with rain, so violently that they creaked slightly at the joints, while a thousand drops sprayed off them like sparks. And at times the cool scent of the snow seemed to drift down from the mountains, both sweet and sharp as you breathed it in. Everything in the air and on the earth was in movement, seething with impatience. Quietly snorting, the horses trotted on along the road, going downhill now, and the sound of their bells went far ahead of them.
The first thing the young man did on reaching the hotel was to look through the list of guests staying there. He was quickly disappointed. Why did I come? he began to ask himself restlessly. Staying up here in

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 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 Press.

"As much in his novellas as in his short stories, the Austrian writer s psychological acuity brought his protagonists and their dilemmas vividly to life... A rediscovery of Zweig through this book gives an enlightening perspective on the past century and how we got where we are today." BlogCritics.org

Burning Secret
"Breathtaking ... the final sentence is unlike anything I have ever read before."  Guardian

A Chess Story
'Perhaps the best chess story ever written, perhaps the best about any game'  Economist

Fear
"Brilliant, unusual and haunting ... Stefan Zweig's time of oblivion is over for good."  Salman Rushdie, The New York Times

Confusion
"A marvellously poised account of misunderstood motives, thwarted love, and sublimated desires"   TLS
 
Journey into the Past
"Vintage Stefan Zweig  lucid, tender, powerful and compelling'."  Independent