Reading Order
The World of YesterdayStefan Zweig The World of Yesterday Reading Order
Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday (1942) is the greatest memoir of the early twentieth century — Zweig's account of his life from his comfortable Viennese Jewish bourgeois childhood through the First World War, the Weimar Republic, and the rise of Hitler to his exile in Brazil, written in the weeks before his suicide in 1942. Zweig was one of the most famous writers in the world in the 1930s, and his memoir is above all an elegy for the European culture that produced him — a culture of cosmopolitan humanism, of the free movement of ideas and people across national boundaries, of the belief that civilization was cumulative and irreversible. The World of Yesterday is required reading for understanding what the twentieth century destroyed.
Where to start
The World of Yesterday
Complete The World of Yesterday Book List
- 1Buy
The World of Yesterday
Stefan Zweig·1942·Zweig's autobiography and his final work — his account of European culture from 1880 to his exile; written in Brazil in the weeks before his suicide and published posthumously; the essential memoir of the world the twentieth century destroyed - 2Buy
Chess Story
Stefan Zweig·1942·Zweig's last novella, published posthumously in the same year as The World of Yesterday — the story of a chess master confronted by a man who learned chess by playing against himself in Gestapo isolation; the most concentrated example of Zweig's psychological virtuosity and a good introduction to his fiction - 3Buy
Beware of Pity
Stefan Zweig·1939·Zweig's only full-length novel — Lieutenant Hofmiller's compassionate deception of a disabled heiress; a long, almost unbearable study in the psychology of pity and the damage it does to both its object and its subject; for readers who want Zweig in extended form - 4Buy
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Stefan Zweig·1922·Zweig's most celebrated novella — a dying woman's letter to the celebrated novelist who seduced and forgot her; the essential introduction to Zweig's psychological fiction and his mastery of the novella form
The World of Yesterday — Frequently Asked Questions
What order should I read Stefan Zweig in?
Start with The World of Yesterday for the biographical and historical context that enriches all his fiction, or with Letter from an Unknown Woman or Chess Story for quick, perfect examples of his novella form. Beware of Pity is his only novel and is best read after you know his shorter work.
Why did Stefan Zweig kill himself?
Stefan Zweig and his wife Charlotte committed suicide in Petrópolis, Brazil in February 1942. In a farewell letter, Zweig explained that he was too old and too exhausted to rebuild his life after the destruction of the European world that had formed him — a world he mourned throughout The World of Yesterday.
What is The World of Yesterday about?
The World of Yesterday is Stefan Zweig's autobiography, covering his life from his comfortable Viennese childhood in the 1890s through the First World War, the Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, and his years of exile to his final refuge in Brazil. It is above all an elegy for the European culture of cosmopolitan humanism that Zweig believed had been permanently destroyed by Nazism.
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