Five of Stefan Zweig's most powerful novellas, containing some of his most famous and best-loved work.

A casual introduction, a challenge to a simple game of chess, a lovers' reunion, a meaningless infidelity: from such small seeds Zweig brings forth five startlingly tense tales--meditations on the fragility of love, the limits of obsession, the combustibility of secrets and betrayal.

To read anything by Zweig is to risk addiction; in this collection the power of his writing--which, with its unabashed intensity and narrative drive, made him one of the bestselling and most acclaimed authors in the world--is clear and irresistible. Each of these stories is a bolt of experience, unforgettable and unique.
Five of Stefan Zweig's most powerful novellas, containing some of his most famous and best-loved work:


• Burning Secret
• A Chess Story
• Fear
• Confusion
• Journey into the Past
(Stand alone paperback editions of individual novellas from Pushkin and New York Review of Books will remain in print.)

"As much in his novellas as in his short stories, the Austrian writer’s psychological acuity brought his protagonists and their dilemmas vividly to life... A rediscovery of Zweig through this book gives an enlightening perspective on the past century and how we got where we are today." — BlogCritics.org

Burning Secret
"Breathtaking ... the final sentence is unlike anything I have ever read before." — Guardian

A Chess Story
'Perhaps the best chess story ever written, perhaps the best about any game' — Economist

Fear
"Brilliant, unusual and haunting ... Stefan Zweig's time of oblivion is over for good." — Salman Rushdie, The New York Times

Confusion
"A marvellously poised account of misunderstood motives, thwarted love, and sublimated desires" — TLS
 
Journey into the Past
"Vintage Stefan Zweig — lucid, tender, powerful and compelling'." — Independent