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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.)

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"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´ Nicholas Lezard, 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´ Robert Macfarlane, TLS

Journey into the Past
´Vintage Stefan Zweig--lucid, tender, powerful and compelling ´ Independent

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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.

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