Montaigne - by Stefan Zweig (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Reading this, it's hard to not see alarming warning signs about today's world--intolerance, extremism, misinformation, institutional decay, fanaticism and fundamentalism, technological disruption, demagogues, charlatans, and con artists... But I love that it also gives us solutions." -Ryan Holiday, author of The Daily Stoic

A brilliant and impassioned biography of one of the founding fathers of humanism, from one of its greatest defenders in the 20th century.

"An invaluable addition to Zweig's canon, casting as much light on the author's own preoccupation with personal and individual liberty as it does on Montaigne." --Independent

Written during the Second World War, Zweig's typically passionate and readable biography of Michel de Montaigne is also a heartfelt argument for the importance of intellectual freedom, tolerance and humanism.

Zweig was already an émigré--driven far from a Europe torn apart by totalitarianism and war--when, in a damp Brazilian cellar, he found an old copy of Michel de Montaigne's Essais. Montaigne and his masterpiece were to become Zweig's last great meeting of minds, for both men were living through times of great turmoil: Montaigne in retreat from France's appalling wars of religion, and Zweig amid the rise of Nazism across Europe. Just as Montaigne sought to remain aloof from the factionalism of his day, so Zweig tried to the last to defend his freedom of thought, and argue for peace and compromise.

With the intense psychological acuity and elegant prose so characteristic of Zweig's fiction, this account of Montaigne's life asks how we ought to think, how to face the world, and how to live. One of the final works Zweig wrote before his suicide, it offers both a brilliantly impassioned portrait of a great mind, and a moving plea for tolerance in a world ruled by cruelty.

Review Quotes

"Thanks to Stone's assiduous translation, Zweig's fascinating meditation on the writer in whom he saw himself mirrored appears now for the first time in English. Zweig weaves biographical elements into his study--Montaigne's study of Latin at age four, his retirement from his public duties as a French nobleman at age 38--but the book is more properly an introduction to an endlessly inquisitive thinker who never stopped searching for the truth . . . This captivating study portrays a writer whose life and work can be summed up by his constant posing of the question, 'How should I live?'"
--Publishers Weekly

"Zweig's accumulated historical and cultural studies remain a body of achievement almost too impressive to take in."
--Clive James, critic and journalist

"[Pushkin Press's republication of Stefan Zweig's work] has been entirely successful. Zweigmania seems to break out with the publication of each book, with readers discovering his work by word-of-mouth and by accident."
--Guardian

"[Zweig's] life and work tell of the perilous flimsiness of our world of security-a message that many insistently deny, but somehow need to hear."
--John Gray, New Statesman

About the Author

Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna. He was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig became an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas. In 1934, he left Austria to live in England and New York--and produced his most celebrated works: his only novel, Beware of Pity, and his memoir, The World of Yesterday. He settled in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide.

Will Stone born 1966, is a poet, essayist and translator. His translations from French and German include works by Joseph Roth, Georg Trakl, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gérard de Nerval, Georg Simmel, Maurice Betz, Guy de Pourtalès, Emile Verhaeren and Georges Rodenbach. His recent translations include a collection of letters by Rilke (Seagull Books, 2024) and a collection of stories by Guy de Maupassant (Pushkin, 2027).