Beware of Pity (Stefan Zweig's classic novel) - Softcover

Zweig, Stefan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908968370 ISBN 13: 9781908968371

Publisher: Pushkin Press, 2013

Synopsis

In 1913 a young second lieutenant discovers the terrible danger of pity. He had no idea the girl was lame when he asked her to dance his compensatory afternoon calls relieve his guilt but give her a dangerous glimmer of hope.

Stefan Zweig s only novel is a devastating depiction of the torment of the betrayal of both honour and love, realised against the background of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

About this title

Review

'Beware of Pity is chillingly resonant in the Trump era... [in Beware of Pity] this sense of creeping decomposition is compulsively alive. It is hypnotic' -- Simon McBurney, Guardian

'Turns everything you think you believe about compassion on its head' -- Nicole Barker

'Beware of Pity is the most exciting book I have ever read...a feverish, fascinating novel' -- Antony Beevor, Sunday Telegraph

'The novel I'll really remember reading this year is Stefan Zweig's frighteningly gripping Beware of Pity... part of the ongoing, valiant reprinting by Pushkin Press of Zweig's collected oeuvre; an intoxicating, morally shaking read about human responsibilities and a real reminder of what fiction can do best' -- Ali Smith, TLS Book of the Year 2008

'An unremittingly tense parable about emotional blackmail, this is a book which turns every reader into a fanatic' -- Julie Kavanagh, Intelligent Life

'It's just a masterpiece. When I read it I thought, how is it that I don't already know about this?' -- Wes Anderson

'The rediscovery of this extraordinary writer could well be on a par with last year's refinding of the long-lost Stoner, by John Williams, and which similarly could pluck his name out of a dusty obscurity' -- Simon Winchester, Telegraph

'Zweig's single greatest work' -- The Times

'Zweig's fictional masterpiece' -- Guardian

'Combines great storytelling with wonderful prose' -- Jeffrey Archer, Independent

'Original and powerful' -- New York Times

'It's a masterpiece. I didn't discover it till I was 16-years-old. He was the number one on the bestseller lists in the 1940s. He was a great storyteller and great writer, amazing combination' --Jeffery Archer, DNA India

About the Author

Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was born in Vienna, into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear.

In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he moved to London, where he wrote his only novel Beware of Pity. He later moved on to Bath, taking British citizenship after the outbreak of the Second World War. With the fall of France in 1940 Zweig left Britain for New York, before settling in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide.

Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1908968370
• ISBN 13: 9781908968371
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464