Fantastic Night and Other Stories

Five of Stefan Zweig's most compelling novellas are presented together in this powerful volume. Fantastic Night, translated into English for the first time, is the story of one transforming evening in the life of a rich and bored young man. His experiences jolt him out of his languor and give him a newfound relish for life, which is then ironically cut short by the Great War. The Invisible Collection and Buchmendel, two of Zweig's most potent works, explore lives led in the single-minded pursuit of art and literature against a backdrop of poverty and corruption. And finally, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Zweig's poignant and heartbreaking tale unrequited love, counter-balanced by The Fowler Snared, in which it is the man whose passion remains unrequited, complete the collection.

"Thanks to the enterprising Pushkin Press, it is now possible to read the novellas on which Zweig's reputation must finally depend. His genius as a storyteller encompasses the brainy as well as those of average intelligence, the very rich and the desperately poor. He deserves to be famous again, and for good."-Paul Bailey, The Times Literary Supplement

"Fortunately, the Pushkin Press has been publishing some of Zweig's works in fluent translations and handsome editions: it is thus performing a valuable service for British literary culture . . . a writer of great sensitivity."-Anthony Daniels, The Sunday Telegraph

Stefan Zweig, novelist, biographer, poet and translator, was born in 1881 in Vienna into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. With the rise of Nazism, he moved from Salzburg to London (taking British citizenship), New York and finally Brazil where he died in 1942. Anthea Bell has produced the first English translation of Fantastic Night. Eden and Cedar Paul translated The Invisible Collection, Buchmendel, Letter from an Unknown Woman and The Fowler Snared.