THE 28 STEFAN ZWEIG STORIES ON THIS SITE

An elderly man is deeply shocked when in the middle of the night he sees his nineteen-year-old daughter coming out of the bedroom of another guest of the hotel in an Italian coastal resort where he’s on vacation with his family for health reasons. The shock is severe and affects both his physical and psychic equilibrium as he comes to grips with the relational and moral gulf between himself and the rest of his family.
A dramatic story most effectively translated by Eden and Cedar Paul in (…)

A university professor reflects on his career when honoured by his colleagues and students with an elaborate 200-page biography on the occasion of his sixtieth anniversary, and is struck by the contrast between the outward image he has represented to the world and his inner vision of himself.
In particular he remembers his tumultuous first year as a student and his life-changing encounter with an inspired professor with whom he had had the most important relationship in his life, a (…)

An elegant lady relaxing on the terrace of her magnificent mansion on the Riviera is called upon by a man she had known in her younger days. About to leave for America, he has come to ask her for an explanation of why she had decided to marry into money rather than take her chances with him back then.
Stefan Zweig’s first published story, a remarkable achievement by the 19-year-old author.
Translated specially for this site.
(2,100 words)
An e-book, with the original text in an (…)

A young woman in an elegant building in the most select part of Vienna is quite beside herself with annoyance because the new gown that she has ordered for Derby Day has failed to arrive on time, obliging her to miss the fancy event. Finally she decides to put on her oldest dress and just go out for a walk on that lovely spring day. When she’s admired by a young student who finally works up the courage to ask if he might accompany her she accepts out of a spirit of adventure, and they have a (…)

Three dramatic short stories by the author of Letter From an Unknown Woman :
1. In the Snow (1901) – Word comes to a Jewish community celebrating Hanukah in a small town in medieval Germany that a large group of religious fanatics are on their way with hate in their hearts and blood on their hands (4,400 words);
2. The Cross (1906) – A French officer is cut off behind enemy lines after an ambush during the Napoleonic War in Spain and desperately tries to survive amid the immeasurable (…)

Erika Ewald is a young, lonely and innocent young woman who falls increasingly under the charm of a very gifted violinist whom she accompanies on the piano, and finally things come to a brink during a Sunday outing to the outskirts of Vienna where the owner of an establishment where they stop for refreshments politely addresses her as the violinist’s bride, that they both realise she almost is.
An intense and very convincing exploration of the profound emotional, psychological and sensual (…)

A young medical student comes to Vienna and has enormous difficulties adjusting to life in the big city, not only because he’s still under-developed, immature and shy but also because he’s quite overwhelmed by the force of the extroverted and quite domineering older student in the next room in his dwelling, not to speak of the latter’s outspoken and somewhat aggressive girlfriend. But one day the landlady comes to him in tears pleading for his help as a medical student to save her young (…)

A fifteen-year-old English boy on holiday in the grand Scottish castle of his relatives wanders into the grounds late at night, fascinated by its somewhat eerie atmosphere. Where he’s abruptly accosted in the dark by a passionate young woman who vigorously embraces him before fleeing. Unable to identify his mysterious aggressor he lurks under the same tree again the next night and has another encounter with the ghostly girl, and thereafter desperately seeks to identify the culprit and to (…)

In in the celebrated Austrian mountain resort of Semmering an experienced ladies’ man sets his sights on an attractive woman who has come there with her sickly twelve-year-old son for a cure, and cleverly first strikes up a friendship with the boy as a way to his mother’s heart. This stratagem is brilliantly successful, but the baron makes the mistake of ignoring the boy from then on.
This 23,000-word novella is one of Stefan Zweig’s best-known works – with Letter From an Unknown Woman (…)

A well-to-do married woman who has faulted with a seductive young pianist is aggressively blackmailed by a coarse young woman who threatens to denounce her to her husband. The blackmail is increasingly successful, the lady is overcome with fear and anguish and finally she sees only one fatal way out of her dilemma.
One of the major works of the celebrated author of Letter From an Unknown Woman.
(22,800 words)
Translated specially for this site. An e-book, with the original text in an (…)