Beware of Pity

'Zweig's fictional masterpiece' GUARDIAN'An intoxicating, morally shaking read... A real reminder of what fiction can do best' ALI SMITH '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 only novel written by one of the most popular writers of the twentieth centuryIn 1913, young second lieutenant Hofmiller discovers the terrible danger of pity. He had no idea the girl was lame when he asked her to dance-so begins a series of visits, motivated by pity, which relieve his guilt but give her a dangerous glimmer of hope.Stefan Zweig's unforgettable novel is a devastating depiction of the betrayal of both honour and love, amid the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Autorentext
Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Between the wars, Zweig was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear. In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he left Austria, and lived in London, Bath and New York-a period during which he produced his most celebrated works: his only novel, Beware of Pity, *and his memoir, The World of Yesterday.* He eventually settled in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.