The Atlantic Bookshelf: A Guide to Good Books

IN 1901, Stefan Zweig, a young and rich Austrian of Jewish antecedents, made his literary début with a slim volume of verse; thirty years later (as he passed the half-century mark) he found himself acknowledged one of the most widely read European authors alive. An indefatigable scholar, Zweig concerned himself early with translations, criticism, biographies. The salvos of 1914 shook him loose from his cloister, gave Incentive to his powerful play, Jeremiah (very anti-war). From his peace-time retreat on Capuchin Hill above Salzburg, he dispatched the work of his maturity. His plays have been acted in a score of languages. Of all toreign writers he is the most widely read in France. In Germany 1,400,000 copies of his books have been sold. His most recent biography, containing new material from the imperial Austrian archives, has already been translated into fifteen languages.