Este "detalle histórico" me permitió entender el valiosísimo aporte de muchos de nuestros antepasados (hombres como nosotros)quienes nos dejaron un legado inmenso e impagable. Cada relato es tan fascinante como la realidad a la que invoca Zweig cuando nos lleva con el lenguaje tan bello y profundo que lo caracteriza a los conflictos de un navegante especial. Un trabajo minucioso digno de ser leido. Fue un viaje de retorno a aquellos días donde la humanidad descubría contra viento y marea el mundo en el que nacimos.

The untold story of the first man to circle the globe... contrary to common belief it was not Magellan. He died during the trip. It was a slave known only as Enrique.All the other people aboard the ship were far away from returning to their birthplaces in Spain or Portugal. But Enrique, a slave taken by force to Europe by the old route used by traders before the new world was discovered, returned to his island by the opposite direction... fascinating.

Discovery, human conflicts, deep psychology, all interpreted with meticulous accuracy and breathtaking storytelling. An evergreen, a real mental stuff to read and best entertainment.

I read this book as a teenager and its still one of my all time favourite books!Its written very passionately and that Zweig passion leaps from page to page - I swear my cheeks were burning while reading this book and its my highest recomendation!

I actually read this book in a French translation (from the original German) that appeared in 1936, but it is a timeless story and can be read in 1999 with great pleasure. This is a finely-crafted biography of the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, crowned queen at the age of one week upon her father's untimely death, shipped off to France at age 5 where she was brought up and eventually married the future king Francois II, then sent back to Scotland by her mother-in-law, Catherine di Medici, when Francois II died while still a teenager. The book concentrates on the few years in Scotland during which she set up her court, married a young English nobleman, Henry Darnley, and was led down a path of plots and assassinations until her flight to England several years later. This all took place while she was in her early '20s. It is a gripping story and Zweig tells parts of it in her own words, poems and letters.

She was an accomplished horsewoman, having learned how to hunt in France, leading armies into battle, and escaping from imprisonment in Scotland by all-night rides; cultivated, having learned poetry from Ronsard in France, and continuing to write poetry in French much of her life; passionate, falling madly in love with the unworthy Darnley, then after his death, with the dark Bothwell, his assassin; religious, defending Catholicism against the extremist protestants of Scotland and Elizabeth I of England, and finding solace in her religion at the end of her life. Surrounded by Scottish lords looking out for their own clans, she was unable to play the brutal game of survival, preferring to follow her instincts and desires. Zweig's short book combines historical facts with speculation on her motives and character; this is a book that reads like a novel, written by a master of biography. I would love to see a new movie based on this book, because I find her story so intense and relevant to today's world. I put off reading the last chapter (about her execution at the hands of perfidious Elizabeth I, who then denied her responsibility in it) until I had time to start re- reading the book from the beginning, because I didn't want it to end!.

This book is dealing with the past but talks about eternal human things. The style and historical accuracy is unparalleled ! Read it!

The reader discovers together with Stefan Zweig the poetic force and the essential human and metaphysical messages of Verhaeren's work.
Zweig's analysis is perspicacious and profound, written in an enthralling style.

Verhaeren sees art as a victory on the human destiny of suffering and his art as a witness of that victory.
He is the first enthusiastic bard and realistic painter of the modern world: the emergence of the democracy of the big cities, the masses, the mines, the struggle between the industry (the progressives, the socialists) and the peasantry (the conservatives, the Catholics), the emigration, the financial crises, the scientific discoveries.
Behind this realism lay Verhaeren's philosophical conceptions and aspirations: his limitless love for a physically and metaphysically free humanity, free from hazard and obscure religions; the emancipation of mankind through the work of scientists and their scientific discoveries.
Verhaeren is a pantheist, a participating part of nature and the human community. He is the poet of an emerging Europe as a big brotherhood.

It is horrendously difficult to write an inspiring book about a poet and his work and to present an analysis that arouses the interest of the reader. But this work reads like a thriller. It should be read by all biographers in order to learn how to keep their readers in their spell. I believe every poet would like to have a biographer like Zweig.
Not to be missed.

I'm working at the University, here in Mexico, over some of the poets that have writen their feelings using the industrialisation words. One of them is Emile Verhaeren. I'd like to know if there is an English or an American poet writing before 1900 this kind of words. If you sell the books, please, let me know

24 HORAS EN LA VIDA DE UNA MUJER. Stefan Zweig.

Esta novela es intensa, me dejo lleno de preguntas sobres las razones que .llevan a una persona, específicamente a una mujer a dejarse arrastrar por un arrebato de pasión, de esa pasión femenina tan diferente a la nuestra. Nuestra pasión, es aventura, es un juego, una cacería. Las mujeres sueñan con un rapto de felicidad que las envuelva, el príncipe azul que las saque de la monotonía de una existencia fría y calculada.24 horas en la vida de una mujer y toda una vida para olvidar o para recordar que en esas horas se vivieron muchas vidas. A todas las mujeres que viven una vida anodina deberían cambiar? Deberían dejarse llevar por alguna pasión? Eso también va para nosotros. Deberíamos ser esclavos de nuestras pasiones para lograr la libertad o es al revés? Tenemos en verdad un lado oscuro que nos puebla?

Las mujeres son tan fuertes, tan serenas que cuando se ven dominadas por una pasión como esta es un escándalo, no así los hombres, animales de pasión a quienes a nadie causan asombro si huyen a los 40 con una jovencita, huyendo de la vejez en sus crisis de mediana edad.

Al igual que el autor me conformaría con solo entender a los hombres y no juzgarlos, ya es suficiente trabajo tratar de entender una raza tan contradictoria como la humana, para que encima de eso me toque un papel de juez gratuito de cosas que van mas allá de mi entendimiento y que no soy capaz de juzgar.

Stefan Zweig draws upon his personal experiences andimpressions of Brazil to portray a vast, inviting, fertile land of immense resources and a history devoid of major wars in Brazil: A Land Of The Future. Here portrayed is the untouched beauty of the Brazilian interior, the vibrant growth and progress of the urban areas, and a vision of an almost utopian place seemingly unaffected by the ills of the modern world and providing refuge from global hostilities. Ably translated into English by Lowell A. Bangerter, Brazil: A Land Of The Future is recommended reading for armchair travelers, students of geography and western hemispheric studies, and Brazilian history, culture, and society.

I read this book in the English translation which came out in 1935 I believe. The English title is The Right to Heresy--Castellio against Calvin. I was not familiar with Castellio before reading this book--he was one of the truly great humanist thinkers, a contemporary of Calvin and a man who believed in freedom of religious thought, he explored the philosophical and practical importance of tolerance and free religious thought during the early years of the Protestant Reformation and was able to preserve his essential belief in mercy and understanding in the face of harshly cruel and eventually fatal persecution. Calvin is exposed as a profound, important, but deeply flawed theologian. His cruelty and dishonesty and cold disregard for human emotions and the need for happiness, simple pleasures, etc. is vividly portrayed by Zweig. Calvin's attempts to turn Geneva, Switzerland into a harsh theological dictatorship (Church bells were banned because there sound was considered too sensual: a man thrown into jail for smiling at a baptism, people burned at the stake for disagreement with minor theological issues, etc.)reminded me of current descriptions of the Taliban and the reoccurring nature of this problem of fundamentalist, joyless attempts by religious fanatics to remold human nature. Zweig has a flair for drama and writes a very moving account of the battle between these two men. He also tells us about the persecution of Servetus and other great "heretics" of the day. I highly recommend this book.

A friend who teaches European lit asked me if I didn't think Stefan Zweig was "sentimental." But in the case of "Confusion," all the high emotion fits the story of a rather obsessive-compulsive young man, who is rather disinterested in learning until he meets the right teacher. Framed by the perspective of this same young man as a 60-year-old professor, the tale is even more poignant. This tale of an over-eager student, who can't see that he's behaving like a spurned lover when his teacher criticizes him, is a searing psychological study. Considering that Zweig gave the eulogy at Freud's funeral, who better to explore such things? I've never read a work by Zweig I didn't find richly textured, beautifully written, and deeply felt. If that's "sentimental," then I plead guilty!

Zweig was the master of melodrama. Every single work of fiction that he wrote falls neatly into that style, and makes no bones about it. However, his melodramas were gut-wrenching, not sappy; profoundly moving, not sentimental; grief-inducing, not tear-jerking; sad, but not manipulative. Furthermore, his stories had the benefit of not being overlong, and they never dragged or repeated themselves, like his novel Beware of Pity tends to do. This collection contains some of his best work - surely the first and the last stories already are worth the price of admission. "The Royal Game" is a harrowing look at a little-known phenomenon known as "chess fever," an inexplicable but very real affliction, and remains the definitive portrait of same. The last story, "Letter From An Unknown Woman" has to be read to be believed. A Romantic (capital R) story of unrequited, lifelong, hopelessly fixated love, it is as close as Zweig ever came to writing an unadulterated masterpiece. Every word is pure gold. It's one of those things you'll wish you had written - and one that is inexplicably obscure, despite having been made into an American movie in 1948. The other three stories don't quite live up to that standard (and let's face it, few things can), but they're good, "Amok" especially.

However, I must question what was going on in the head of whoever put this book together. What was the basis of the stories' selection? And why was it necessary to limit the book to only five of them? What sort of Zweig collection is it that includes "Fear," but doesn't include "The Invisible Collection," or "Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman," or "The Sunset of One Heart"? Huh? Huh? As long as you've set out with the noble goal of reprinting the wonderful stories of a sadly ignored author, you might as well do a competent job of it. If this book is supposed to fill the role of a Zweig Greatest Hits, it is woefully incomplete. It's sad, since it seems to be the only such collection in print, and since much of what _is_ in it is truly spectacular.

Nobody has ever described feelings, the deepest human emotions, like Stefan Zweig did. I think he was the most gifted German language writer, a psychologist as well as a historian and it is a shame that there are not more translations of his work into English available. Forget everything you have ever read before and dive into the world of an obsessed mind in "the Royal game", the turmoil between moral and guilt in "Amok" and the most wonderful and sad story of an unfulfilled love in the "Letter from an unknown woman". This is as good as literature gets, even brilliant when translated from another language. To be able to read more of his work would be a reason for learning German!

Each of the novellas composing this book would need an independant review to give truth to it. I'm surprised at the Editor's selection of novellas and i'm still wondering why they've been put together...

The Master Game is a story about the power of the mind - and our adaptability in traumatic situations. And it is centered on a game... But I ain't say no more!
The Letter from an unknown woman tells the tragic destiny of an unknown adolescent love. A true romance hidden for more than ten years...

Overall an excellent book, but if you don't know Stefan Zweig, that might be a difficult introduction to his work. Try Amok first!

Portraying Marie Antoinette as an "average woman," as the title of Zweig's work provocatively suggests, is a debatable proposition. On the one hand, as Zweig shows throughout this study, Marie Antoinette was no prodigy: she was flawed, egotistic, intellectually limited and ... indiscreet. Her greatest passions were for clothes, vast flowery gardens, [fancy] jewelry and good looking Swedish men; she was a compulsive spendthrift; her political self-awareness was zero and her policy meddling was uniformly disastrous. Her indiscipline at court was flagrantly exploited by her political enemies - notably her jealous and ambitious brothers-in-law Louis and Charles (the later Bourbon Restoration kings) - who portrayed her as a modern day Jezebel. In all of these respects, her life was far from "average". But the "ordinariness" within, argues Zweig, left her ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of an extraordinary life.

Once the Revolution happens, however, Zweig's "averageness" argument makes a dog-leg turn. Under the extreme pressures of her imprisonment, her husband's guillotining, her separation from her beloved children and her state trial for treason, she rose above the "average," drawing on her Habsburg dignity and treating her Committee inquisitors with the contempt they deserved. In death, if not in life, she proved herself to be a true daughter of Maria Theresa. Even ordinary people can be martyrs, Zweig seems to be saying.

Zweig is a natural storyteller, and the fact that he, like Marie Antoinette, was Viennese gives him insights into her sensibilities and predilections. Another Viennese voice can be heard in this narrative: the psychological narrative owes much to Dr. Freud - particularly when we come to her early womanhood. Can it be, as Zweig dares to suggest, that Louis XVI's early impotence, and young Marie Antoinette's consequent frustration, fueled her shallow materialism? Was her scandalously profligate lifestyle an outlet for ... frustration? Did one man's "shortcomings" thus cause the revolution? And what of the bizarre Strasbourg ceremony whereby the newlywed Marie Antoinette was forced to [unclothe] at the frontier, lest the new Dauphine of France cross the border wearing foreign clothes? Surely an emotionally scarring experience? Her tale is a gift for the Freudian, and Zweig milks it for all it's worth.

Marie Antoinette... many things go through one's mind when thinking of that name. Many say she was cruel, pampered, and spoiled, and that she was the main couse of the French Revolution, yet, she was just a woman, a woman born a princess in the Austrian court, married to a French boy whom she had never met by the age of 15, crowned by 19, and beheaded by 35.

Life went by so fast by Marie Antoinette!!, and never gave her a chance to choose what she wanted out of it.

Stefan Zweig is a marvelous writer, and manages to gives us an intimate portrait of at times very hated, at others very loved and admired woman, an ordinary person who only wished for a normal life with her family, a little place of her own, where she didn't have to adjust and adapt to the many different rules impossed on her.

He describes the life of the French court as only he could, and you feel like you are part of the story, hearing about Versailles, Louvre, the revolution and the people involved, which makes this an excellent book to learn about history, about life in the French court, and about France's last great queen.

So, was she cruel, spoiled, and ignorant? read and decide for yourself....

Zweig's biography is so fascinating, I can't believe it's been allowed to go out of print. He does a remarkable job of delineating a light-headed, pleasureseeking woman who was thrust into circumstances she couldn't have anticipated or coped with. Marie Antoinette becomes a real woman, not a figurehead or a scapegoat. No one could ask for anything less.

Besides two long and boring passages that, in my opinion, do not add anything to the main story, this book is Stefan Zweig's masterpiece.
The emotions, repressions, frustrations, fears, joy, expressions, gestures, are well studied and described by the author, with the most intimate and subtle details.
The most poignant scene is when she caressed his hand. He did not love her, just pitied her, but what he felt when she caressed his hand was stronger than making love to any woman he had ever desired before. The description of her caress - and of his emotion during that caress - is irrefutably the strongest in literature. A moment of pure bliss...

"Beware of Pity" is a brilliant book by one of the world's great writers.

This fascinating "psychological" novel is reminiscent of "Rebecca" in the way the story unfolds slowly and then totally envelops the reader. I actually read it straight through the first time, had to miss the next day's work. I've loved it just as much with each reread.

Zweig writes beautifully. He demonstrates elegance, economy, subtlety. There is never a wasted word.

While you are at it, read his short story "The Royal Game."
These are two examples of fiction at its very best.

The scenario is settled at the beginning of the XXth century, right before the outburst of WW I with the murder of the prince of Austria, an event subtly knitted to the action taking place in the novel.

25 years old lieutenant Hofmiller, protagonist and narrator, is the prototype of the young man who has never cared much about anything but his own career and who has taken everything for granted during his whole life. Being good hearted, he hasn't yet experienced a strong attachment to a woman, nor he had even been deeply loved by any.

He describes himself as a not very thoughtful or introspective person, whose only worries were related to his horses and his position in the army.... until he meets Edith Von Kekesfalva. She is the lamed daughter of a Jewish rich man who became an aristocrat by purchasing the nobility title and changing his name.

Due to a gaffe Hofmiller commits [inviting the girl for a dance] a dense and excruciating relationship between both starts. The author delves deep into all the intricacies such a bond entails and the situations which arise when pity rules human behavior and is entangled with sincere love. Although the book may not seem very engaging at the beginning, the interest grows as the tension increases between the characters, leading to the dramatic circumstances that trigger the wonderful end.