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The World of Yesterday cover art

The World of Yesterday

By: Stefan Zweig, Anthea Bell - translator
Narrated by: David Horovitch
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Summary

Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, recalls the golden age of prewar Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall with the onset of two world wars. Zweig's passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction. It is an unusually humane account of Europe from the closing years of the 19th century through to World War II, seen through the eyes of one of the most famous writers of his era. Zweig's books (novels, biographies, essays) were translated into numerous languages, and he moved in the highest literary circles; he also encountered many leading political and social figures of his day.

The World of Yesterday is a remarkable, totally engrossing history. This translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell captures the spirit of Zweig's writing in arguably his most important work, completed shortly before his tragic death in 1942. It is read with sympathy and understanding by David Horovitch.

©1942 Fischer Verlag. 2011 Anthea Bell (translation) (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd

Critic reviews

"One of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century." (David Hare)
"Zweig's celebration of the brotherhood of peoples reminds us that there is another way." ( The Nation)

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The Brink of Destruction


This memoir of Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) is another of Ukemi’s treasures. Zweig was the most important writer of his day writing in German, but his work was banned by the Nazis. Translated into English, his memoir The World of Yesterday was rescued by the Pushkin Press only within the last ten years. The translation by Anthea Bell (who concludes this beautifully sympathetic, exactly right narration by David Horovitch) is what a first class translation should be: it’s as though this is just how Zweig wrote it.

Zweig’s world of yesterday is the ‘golden age of security’ of the Austro Hungarian Empire in which he grew up, a wonderful time for Viennese high culture of music, opera, art and conversation provided mainly by Jewish intellectuals, a world Zweig creates in all it richness. As a child he met Brahms, looked on actors as supernatural beings and was fired with a passion for ‘things of the mind.’

His musings over the changing mores as time passed have a universal appeal. Growing up, women of his class were chastely swathed from head to foot, always chaperoned, and bridegrooms would have no idea of what was underneath – a purity which existed alongside thriving and rampant prostitution. Later women cut their hair, discarded their corsets, played tennis and, even if some did have stones thrown at them for doing so, rode bicycles. The insights he gives into his own writing explain the slimness of his novels: he wanted to intensify the ‘inner architecture’ of his writing, to know more than he showed, to hone and omit. A good lesson for writers to absorb.

The memoir is filled with vignettes of great names, from Gorky, Yeats and Strauss to Rilke, Ravel and Valéry– and a host of other Europeans I’d never heard of and are now, as Zweig says, mainly forgotten. His portrait of Freud is a real person, suffering but determined as he neared death; with James Joyce he discusses German and Italian translations of words from Ulysses. His treasured collections included the quill pen and candlestick of his greatest icon, Goethe. He travelled widely, from Paris to America and even in India, observing and analysing with telling detail, as when he describes the peasants doffing their caps before artworks in the Hermitage in Leningrad.

But ‘great evil swept over humanity’ with the onset of WW1, after which he returned to a Salzburg in his ‘poor plundered unhappy country’ where everything was either ‘broken or stolen’ and hyperinflation raged: squirrel for Sunday lunch, frozen potatoes, trousers made of old sacks, treasured possessions sold in markets. But he noted too how real value was found in friendship, art and music. His final heartbreak was the start of the rise of Nazi Germany with its systematic destruction of all that he held dear in humanity and the loss of his hopes for a unified Europe. These were horrors enough, but he didn’t live to see the worst.

The history in this memoir is all too familiar, but Zweig’s telling makes it fresh and new. The World of Yesterday is a unique listening experience.

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26 people found this helpful

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A fascinating memoir

Beautifully written, Zweig covers the forty years between his teenage life in Vienna and the outbreak of the second world war.
Sometimes a detailed social history of the time, sometimes a political comment on various European countries and their governments, sometimes an extraordinary window into his cultural world of famous friends, this is a long book but it is never dull. The social mores of turn of the century Vienna encompass such details as womens' fashion and are sympathetic insights into the remarkable changes which followed the Great War. His thoughts on fellow artists: poets, musicians, playwrights, are fascinating, as is his passionate belief in a united Europe. At this time of Brexit, with political upheavals worldwide, it is inevitable to draw historic parallels with erstwhile political ideologies.

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9 people found this helpful

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Great narration, good book, excellent translation

The narrator is very good, and I liked the way he included footnotes.

The book itself is good. Fascinating stories about what life was like in Vienna and the many eminent people Zweig knew. He speaks to us very directly in Anthea Bell’s clear and natural translation and it feels contemporary, though at times naïve. There are some resonances with today’s world and I wondered, is the EU today’s version of the Austro-Hungarian empire - secure, benevolent, tolerant and under attack by Fascism?

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A beautiful and harrowing view of the late 19th and early 20th century.

This is a truly wonderful book. It explores the Europe of the late 19th century and how cultural and marvellous if was, until plunged onto war in the early 29th century. I have learnt so much about how Europe was by Zweig’s flowing and indulgent narrative. The pure horrors of war are discussed with careful accuracy but what really shines out is one man’s love of Europe and, for me, highlights our mistake in wanting to leave it.

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a perceptive eye on a period in history.

The period from the late 19th century to the second World War. As seen and lived by a European, Austrian intellectual. Thoroughly relevant to modern times.

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5 people found this helpful

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Important book about the end of a Western era

Very well structured. Very good image of the age in which the author was living (from a better-off layer of society's view).
A European voice instead of an American would have made it even better. For example, French words are pronounced well, except for the weight of the syllables. It is a detail, I admit, but as a European listener it causes a little bit of disturbance amongst a great audio experience otherwise.

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A Unique Book Brilliantly Performed

I must admit that I'd never heard of Stefan Zweig and wasn't sure about buying this book but thought it might be interesting. I found it completely gripping. It's not an autobiography as such as it gives very little away about Zweig as a person but it gives an amazing insight into what historical events felt like at the time to someone who lived through them. For example Zweig was convinced that the states wouldn't go to war in 1914 as he thought the states would come to their senses and prevent it. It's also interesting that the memoir was written (and Zweig committed suicide) in 1942 so it was written before the outcome of WW2. The narration was perfect for the book too. Really recommend for anyone interested in this period of history.

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The Reality of Europe through two world wars brought to life

For me this brought to life the world of my parents and their experiences. It’s is a brilliant piece of writing and it made me feel as though I had lived through the times he describes.

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One of the most important books for our time

I read (or heard) this book in almost one sweep. It has an important message from history for us today. It is extremly well written, by one of Europes greatest authors of the time. And it is very well read by David Horovitz. The most important book I have read (heard) for a very long time.

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Brilliant!

This is a work of such clear and fluent language (excellent translation!) and the narrative is concise and carefully composed. It provokes thought on so many themes (the idea of a united Europe, freedom of movement, the intellectual life, what it is to be a European) that still resonate today. His reflections on how he writes, on his friendships with European intellectuals, artists, musicians and thinkers of the day, stimulate the thinking and interest in the reader. And, his frank observations of his own and other’s reactions to the advent of the First World War, the experience of hyper-inflation and the later rise of Fascism, are so open and human, that they enhance our understanding of what it felt like to live in those times and bring colour and pathos to the history of the periods.

Finally, I must praise the narrator for a marvellous reading of this work. His tone matches the quality of the writing perfectly, and, for once, nothing is mispronounced!!!

Bravo!!!!

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