The World of Yesterday
Review of memoir by Stefan Zweig
History as it was lived through (c. 1900–1942), with hindsight stripped away. E.g., the relief and jubilation when Chamberlain delivered his peace-in-our-time speech). Zweig is great at presenting the pre-WWI world view of well-off residents of Vienna, the hopes and fears of the international anti-war community during WWI, the challenges of everyday survival during the hyper-inflation after that war. But for me the most interesting passages were those dealing with his personal interactions with contemporary authors, such as Rilke, Rolland, Joyce, Croce, Gorky, Freud, Shaw, Wells. Unfortunately, he says almost nothing about his personal, non-literary life. He included only two very brief mentions of his two wives. From reading this book, I did not suspect that soon after its completion Zweig and his wife, safe in England, committed double suicide. That tidbit was buried in a footnote by the translator.
