THIS NEW EDITION of Stefan Zweig's biographical essay, subtitled "A Study in Self Portraiture", was originally dedicated to Maxim Gorky. Casanova, the Venetian who lived most of his life in exile from his beloved city, created his own myth which in turn is a reflection of the nature of the city itself. "Imaginative writers," writes Zweig, "rarely have a biography, and men who have biographies are only in exceptional circumstances able to write them ... Casanova is a splendid, almost unique exception."
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.
TRANSLATED BY Eden & Cedar Paul
Cover illustration by Roger de Montebello
ISBN 1 901285 18 9 • 160pp
