The World of Yesterday

Subtitled Memoires of a European and conceived as missive to future generations, this book provides an exemplary account of the Continent in the first half of the twentieth century, with its many upheavals, rendered from the perspective of an exemplary individual: “an Austrian, a Jew, an author, a humanist, and a pacifist,” Zweig remarks, “I always stood at the exact point where these earthquakes were the most violent.”

He began writing the book in the mid-thirties when the rise of the Nazi party motivated him to leave Austria, first for England and later Brazil. Along the way, he recounts the… show more.

Some books you love because of where you were when you read them. During my recent sabbatical in Vienna, I was determined to read a book by Stephan Zweig, perhaps the most popular writer in the world during the 1920s, yet one whose works had fallen into relative obscurity over time. A big reason is that he was a Jewish writer in German just before the Nazis purged bookstores and libraries of all such “degenerate” works. 

This book is a memoir of life buffeted by the events of the 20th century. Zweig lived a rich intellectual life in the stability… show more.