"Confusion is one of his finest and most exemplary works ... a marvellously poised account of misunderstood motives, thwarted love, and sublimated desires ... a perfect reminder of, or introduction to, Zweig's economy and subtlety as a writer"
ROBERT MACFARLANE Times Literary Supplement
"Passion and dedication ... Outside the works of Plato, I don't think I have ever read a better or more honest account of what will always remain at the heart of teaching"
"Passion and dedication ... Outside the works of Plato, I don't think I have ever read a better or more honest account of what will always remain at the heart of teaching"
GABRIEL JOSIPOVICI The Jewish Chronicle
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE BOOK
In the autumn of his days, a distinguished privy councillor contemplates his past, looking back at the key moments of his life. A reluctant and indolent student, he recalls the chance meeting with a professor and his wife, which leads to his sharing their lodgings. In a flash of revelation, the professor unlocks his thirst for knowledge and an ambiguous and close friendship is formed. But the professor harbours a dark secret which changes and scars both men forever.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEFAN ZWEIG was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of 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 enjoyed literary fame. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in bed in an apparent double suicide.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
ANTHEA BELL is the recipient of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation from German, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize in 2002 for the translation of W G Sebald's Austerlitz, and the 2003 Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation. She lives in Cambridge, England.
Translated by Anthea Bell
ISBN 978 1 901285 22 2
144pp
