The Austrian Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was one of the world's most widely admired and widely read authors in the 1920s and 1930s, publishing biographies of figures as diverse as Fyodor Dostoevsky and Marie Antoinette. Zweig was also renowned for his fictional works, including the superb novellas included in this volume.
Apart from their literary brilliance, these works reflect a larger theme: the fate of Hapsburg empire of Austria-Hungary, which fell from its position as one of Europe's great powers to complete disintegration in the wake of World War I (1914-18).
Two of these novellas-The Fowler Snared (1906) and The Burning Secret (1913)-were published before the war. Their mood reflects the spirit of the Hapsburg empire at the time: its lightness, its carefree elegance, its assurance that life would continue as it always had. The Burning Secret especially reflects serious concerns, portraying a triangle consisting of a jaded aristocrat, an attractive matron, and her twelve-year-old son, but for all its depth, the mood remains light and self-assured.
The other three works in this collection, written after the war, display an entirely different spirit. They masterfully portray the bitter zeitgeist of Austria and Germany in the wake of their calamitous defeat. Fear (1920) contrasts the comfortable life of a well-to-do lady with the terror she feels when an affair leads her to be blackmailed. Amok (1922) tells of the grim adventure of a German physician in the Dutch East Indies, evoking the spirit of Joseph Conrad. The Invisible Collection (1925) shows the consequences of the ruinous inflation in postwar Germany.
In the most famous work in this collection, the poignant Letter from an Unknown Woman(1922), a famous author receives a posthumous letter from a woman he has seen and known only incidentally but who has adored him as the great love of her life.
These compelling works deserve to be read and enjoyed not only as snapshots of a vanished world but as the creations of a great literary master.
