Beware of Pity (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics S.) - Softcover

'Beware of Pity is chillingly resonant in the Trump era... [in Beware of Pity] this sense of creeping decomposition is compulsively alive. It is hypnotic' -- Simon McBurney, Guardian

'Beware of Pity is the most exciting book I have ever read...a feverish, fascinating novel' -- Antony Beevor, Sunday Telegraph

'The novel I'll really remember reading this year is Stefan Zweig's frighteningly gripping Beware of Pity... part of the ongoing, valiant reprinting by Pushkin Press of Zweig's collected oeuvre; an intoxicating, morally shaking read about human responsibilities and a real reminder of what fiction can do best' -- Ali Smith, TLS Book of the Year 2008

'An unremittingly tense parable about emotional blackmail, this is a book which turns every reader into a fanatic' -- Julie Kavanagh, Intelligent Life

'It's just a masterpiece. When I read it I thought, how is it that I don't already know about this?' -- Wes Anderson

'The rediscovery of this extraordinary writer could well be on a par with last year's refinding of the long-lost Stoner, by John Williams, and which similarly could pluck his name out of a dusty obscurity' -- Simon Winchester, Telegraph

'Zweig's single greatest work' -- The Times

'Zweig's fictional masterpiece' -- Guardian

'Combines great storytelling with wonderful prose' -- Jeffrey Archer, Independent

'Original and powerful' --New York Times

Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna to a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. Recognition as a writer came early for Zweig; by the age of forty, he had already won literary fame. In 1934, with Nazism entrenched, Zweig left Austria for England, and became a British citizen in 1940. In 1941 he and his second wife went to Brazil, where they committed suicide. Zweig's best-known works of fiction are Beware of Pity (1939) and The Royal Game (1944), but his most outstanding accomplishments were his many biographies, which were based on psychological interpretation.