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.
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 Anthea Bell
Cover illustration by Joel Rosenthal
ISBN 1 901285 22 7 • 144pp
