BIOGRAPHY / HISTORY

EUROPEAN OF YESTERDAY

A Biography of Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig received literary acclaim as a poet, essayist, story writer, biographer and librettist. His works, including his best-selling last work of fiction, "The Royal Game," were successful not only in his native Austria and the German-speaking world, but were also translated into nearly forty languages. His popularity during the years between the two world wars was rivaled by few of his contemporaries.

European of Yesterday is the life story of this sensitive, extraordinarily complicated personality told for the first time in the detail it deserves. Zweig's story is important not only for his literary value but also for the lessons we can take from his ideals of peace, liberty of the individual, and the moral unity of the world, all of which remain so very pertinent today.

"This biography makes truly fascinating reading. The very sound research on which it is based is utterly unobtrusive and Zweig's sad, moving, generous life, with his 'Hamletian indecision' and tragic end in Brazil, is most vividly captured on these pages."
—Forum for Modern Language Studies

"[Prater's] deep immersion in his subject and his full appreciation of Zweig make this an outstanding source book for scholars of that period in Europe."
—The Press, New Zealand

Donald Prater held various appointments in the British Foreign Service and was Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. His biography of Rainer Maria Rilke, A Ringing Glass, was published in 1986, and Thomas Mann: A Life in 1995. He died in Cambridge in August 2001.