The World of Yesterday

By Stefan Zweig,

Book cover of The World of Yesterday

Book description

The World of Yesterday, mailed to his publisher a few days before Stefan Zweig took his life in 1942, has become a classic of the memoir genre. Originally titled “Three Lives,” the memoir describes Vienna of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, the world between the two world wars and the Hitler…

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Why read it?

3 authors picked The World of Yesterday as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

When I first read Zweig’s memoir, I initially thought it was pretentious name-dropping, mentioning one prominent fin de siècle Viennese writer or musician after another. Only years later did I warm to his memories describing a world that existed before the cataclysm of World Wars and the ultimate fate of Europe’s Jewish citizens.

In reading other memoirs from the period (such as Ernst Krenek’s–not available in English), it’s possible to see that Zweig was writing from a position of enormous privilege while also reflecting the very essence of cultural life in a world where culture was perhaps its most important…

From Michael's list on Vienna’s Legacy.

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…

From Patrick's list on memoirs about lives on the move.

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…

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