The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig

Thank you Net Galley. I loved the book.. The writer is a master of the psychological narrative. The diverse vignettes of life, motive and behavior are beautiful and yet melancholy. Excellent job by the translator.

After Wes Anderson used Stefan Zweig’s stories as the inspiration for The Grand Budapest Hotel, Zweig has been everywhere. Pushkin Press’s collection, The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig, offers curious readers another taste, a taste that will surprise them. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a madcap story about the changing perception of Central Europe from Ruritanian land of aristocrats and pastries to a dangerous land of fascists to the cold, impersonal tension of communism. The novellas in this collection are more human, less political, and much less farcical than The Grand Budapest Hotel. This is not a bad thing. I very much enjoyed my second taste of Stefan Zweig’s stories.

“Burning Secret” The first novella in the collection did remind me a bit of Anderson’s film. It starts with a character who seems like the main protagonist until he gives up his space on the stage to the actual protagonist. It takes place in a hotel and starts with a traveling baron on holiday trying to get into a woman’s good graces (and her bed). But it ends up being a quietly profound story about an unloved boy and his mother’s final acquiescence to being a parent.

“A Chess Story” This novella was my favorite of the bunch. It begins with a man spotting a chess master on a boat from New York to Buenos Aires. The man arranges matters so that the chess master plays against a group of fans, only to discover that one of the men on board is a master in his own right. This secret chess player taught himself to play from a stolen book while he was imprisoned by the Nazis. But his salvation by the game led to dangerous fanaticism. Does this secret chess player risk his sanity to take on the world’s reigning master?

“Fear” As she leaves her lover, a woman is recognized in this exquisitely written exploration of fear and shame. She pays off her blackmailer once, then twice, then three times. Her husband is a lawyer and she knows from him that blackmail always ends in exposure. She’s aware that she’s just buying time. The mere knowledge of this tortures her. How is she to escape her problems?

“Confusion” This novella broke my heart, but I had no idea that it would do so from the beginning. The novella opens with a scholar looking over a festschrift written in honor of his long and illustrious career. He notes that the festschrift makes no mention of the man who had the greatest impact on that career. After failing spectacularly at his first semester at a university in Berlin, his father sends the future academic to a new university in the interior. At that university, a professor of English lights his academic fire. Modern readers will probably pick up on what happens next before our narrator does.

“Journey Into the Past” Two lovers are on a train after being apart for nine years in this novella. This story may be a bit of an anti-climax to some readers because of its quietness after the preceding novellas, but it fits with the rest of the collection as another iteration of prohibited love, social standing, and longing.

This collection is brilliant. Zweig’s portraits of characters caught between their own desire and the boundaries custom and society have placed around them are keenly drawn. His Europe is gone, but the people Zweig created still live on the page.

I received a free copy of this ebook from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting collection of 5 novellas, two of which I had read previously. In both cases, this second reading had been helpful in opening up Zweig's methods for me. As I read this collection I came to see, more and more, the manner in which he builds tension casually in his tales, through simple variations on everyday actions. A person may step away for a moment from a stifling situation, taking a refreshing or necessary break that somehow turns his/her life upside down and threatens their entire future. Of the five novellas only one, "Journey into the Past." did not create that tension for me and two of the ones that are new to me, "Fear" and "Confusion", both did it quite effectively. The others are "A Chess Story," as effective as when first read, and "A Burning Secret," somehow better than when I first encountered it.

Another thing I have learned from this collection is to have patience, to allow the writer to build up his characters and setting before providing the "meat" I am looking for. In this respect, perhaps I am a modern person/reader, wanting everything too quickly. The further removed I am from these stories, the more I realize that the tension I felt and found so effective simply would not have existed without that (seemingly) too slow build-up. So perhaps I am learning as a reader too.

I do recommend this book to those who enjoy Zweig and others who may be looking for a new author to try.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Pushkin Press are to be congratulated again, this time for bringing out this excellent collection of Stefan Zweig’s novellas, five of them to be precise. There’s always something to be enjoyed in Zweig’s writings, and although I found this collection slightly uneven, it does contain Chess, which is a masterful tale, and I particularly liked the last one in the book, Journey into the Past. I sometimes find Zweig’s writing a little overblown, but I always admire his psychological insight and understanding of the human heart, as well as the sense of time and place he gives us. The end of Journey into the Past is especially chilling with its glimpse of the beginning of the Nazi era. All in all, essential reading for lovers of his work.

It has taken me along time to finish this very interesting collection, dipping into it between other reading, but I have enjoyed these novellas - some more than others - and am now looking for more of this author's work.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me a copy of the book in exchange for this honest review.