A new paperback edition of the only biography in English of Stefan Zweig


Drawing on a great wealth of newly available sources, this definitive biography recounts the eventful life of a great writer spoilt by success-a life lived in the shadow of two world wars, and which ended tragically in a suicide pact.


Matuschek examines three major phases in the life of the world-famous Austrian author-his years of apprenticeship, his years of success as a professional working writer in Salzburg, and finally his years of exile in Britain, the USA and Brazil.


Including the sort of personal detail conspicuously absent from Zweig's memoir, and incorporating newly discovered documents, Matuschek's biography offers us a privileged view into the private world of the master of psychological insight.



'Oliver Matuschek's Zweig biography is a model of clarity and style'--Frankfurter Allgemeine




Oliver Matuschek is a German author, academic and museum curator. He worked at the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum between 2000 and 2004 and helped curate the exhibition The Three Lives of Stefan Zweig at the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin in 2008. He has also co-authored several documentaries and published numerous works on literary and historical themes, including I Know the Magic of Handwriting: a Catalogue and History of the Autograph Collection of Stefan Zweig.

Translated by: Allan Blunden