The Society of the Crossed Keys

"It's just a masterpiece. When I read it I thought, how is it that we don't know about this-how is it that I am the only person I know who's read this book?" Wes Anderson, on Stefan Zweig's Beware of PityContents: A Conversation with Wes Anderson-Wes Anderson discusses Zweig's life and work with Zweig biographer George Prochnik. The World of Yesterday-Selected extracts from Zweig's memoir, an unrivalled evocation of bygone Europe. Beware of Pity-An extract from Zweig's only novel, a devastating depiction of the torment of the betrayal of both honour and love. Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman-One of Stefan Zweig's best-loved stories in full-a passionate tale of gambling, love and death.



Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a translator and later as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoying literary fame. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in bed in an apparent double suicide.Anthea Bell (1936-2018) was one of the leading literary translators of her time. Her work from German, French and Danish into English encompassed the writings of Kafka, Freud, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Georges Simenon, W.G. Sebald, René Goscinny, and more - including many translations of the work of Stefan Zweig for Pushkin Press.Eden Paul (1865-1944) and Cedar Paul (1880-1972) together translated dozens of books from French, German, Italian and Russian during their thirty years of marriage. Among them were writings on psychoanalysis and socialist thought, as well as many of the works of Stefan Zweig.