Beware of Pity

STEFAN ZWEIG (1881-1942) 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. After a short period in New York, Zweig 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.

It's just a masterpiece. When I read it I thought, how is it that I don't already know about this?

• Foreword 9Author’s Note 17Introduction 21Beware of Pity 31Translator’s Afterword 457