The World of Yesterday - Memoirs of a European by Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig's seminal memoir recalls the golden age of pre-war Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall. Through the story of his life and his relationships with the leading literary figures of the day, Zweig's fervent, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction.

This translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell captures the passionate fluency of Zweig's writing in arguably his most important work, completed the day before his suicide in 1942 - a unique elegy for a lost world of security and peace.

Reviews

One of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed - David Hare

No one captures the sweep of history like Stefan Zweig... An eerie, spellbinding read - Economist

A marvellous recapturing of a Europe that Hitler and his thugs destroyed. Zweig seems to have known everyone, and writes about the great figures of his day with insight, sympathy and, most unusually for a writer, modesty - John Banville

This absolutely extraordinary book is more than just an autobiography... A book that should be read by anyone who is even slightly interested in the creative imagination and the intellectual life, the brute force of history upon individual lives, the possibility of culture and, quite simply, what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942. That should cover a fair number of you - Nicholas Lezard