Stefan Zweig (Author) 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.
A brilliant writer--New York Times One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories--Edmund de Waal Stefan Zweig was a late and magnificent bloom from the hothouse of fin de siecle Vienna--The Wall Street Journal Zweig is one of the masters of the short story and novella, and by 'one of the masters' I mean that he's up there with Maupassant, Chekhov, James, Poe, or indeed anyone you care to name--Nick Lezard, Guardian A new favourite writer of mine--Wes Anderson Perhaps the best chess story ever written, perhaps the best about any game--Economist His great achievement in short form--The Times