Stefan and Lotte Zweig's South American Letters - by Stefan Zweig & Lotte Zweig (Paperback)

About the Book

The previously unpublished letters of a major twentieth-century writer and his wife.

Book Synopsis

Born in Vienna in 1881, Stefan Zweig was one of the most respected authors of his time. Foreseeing Nazi Germany's domination of Europe, Zweig left Austria in 1933. In 1941, following a successful lecture tour of South America and several months in New York, Stefan Zweig and his wife Lotte emigrated to Brazil. Despairing at Europe's future and feeling increasingly isolated, the Zweigs committed suicide together in 1942.

Stefan Zweig was an incessant correspondent but as the 1930s progressed, it became difficult for him to maintain contact with friends and colleagues. As Zweig's correspondence all but ceased with the outbreak of World War II, little is known about his final years. Even less is known about Lotte Zweig, his second-wife, secretary and travel-companion. This book provides an analysis of the Zweigs' time together and for the first time reproduces personal letters, written by the couple in Argentina and Brazil, along with editorial commentary. Furthermore, Lotte finally emerges from her husband's shadows, with the letters offering significant insights into their relationship and her experience of exile.

Review Quotes

"These intimate, familial and war-haunted letters from Stefan and Lotte Zweig throw a new light on their South American years, and their last, tragic act. The informative and insightful introductory texts provided by Oliver Marshall and Darién J. Davis additionally illuminate the complex feelings both Zweigs had about their exile-a condition which they chose, but did not survive. A worthwhile addition to the annals of literary history during the darkest of Europe's periods." -- Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language (Penguin) and After Such Knowledge (PublicAffairs).

"These letters help to prove that definitive biographies do not exist." -- Alberto Dines, author of Morte no Paraíso - A Tragedia de Stefan Zweig (1981, 2004; Portuguese) and Tod im Paradies Die Tragödie des Stefan Zweig (2006; German).

"Davis and Marshall have filled a gap in Latin American literary history by presenting us with a picture of the last years of the famed author, cast adrift by the rise of Nazism and enforced exile. The letters of Stefan and Lotte Zweig cast a flickering light on the psyches of many Austrian and German Jews who, rejected by their homelands, were incapable of either adapting to a new home or of drawing sustenance from their Jewish origins. Aloof from the satisfactions of popular acclaim and paralyzed by guilt over their comfortable life in Brazil, the Zweigs broke through their emotional isolation with an act that sealed their unique place in literary history. Davis and Marshall create a coherent narrative from the episodic correspondence and bring the role of Lotte into view. But the Zweigs' brief sojourn in South America confirms the European boundaries to Stefan's oevre and his marginalization from Argentine, Brazilian, and Jewish history." -- Judith Laikin Elkin, Latin American Jewish Studies Association
The Washington Times

About the Author

Stefan Zweig, novelist, essayist, biographer, dramatist and pacifist, was born in Vienna in 1881 into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. In the 1920s and 30s Zweig enjoyed great literary fame and was one of the most translated authors in the world. With the rise of Nazism, Zweig moved to England where, in 1940, he became a British subject. Following a lecture tour of South America and a period in New York, he moved to Brazil where in 1942, in despair at the future of Europe, he and his wife committed suicide. Lotte Zweig (nee Altmann) was born in 1908 into a middle-class family of merchants in the Prussian city of Kattowitz. Soon after Hitler gained power in Germany, she moved to London. In 1934 Lotte was employed by Stefan Zweig as a multilingual secretary and research assistant. They married in 1939 and the following year left their home in Bath for the Americas. Darien J. Davis is Associate Professor of history at Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. He has written on race, migration and twentieth century intellectual and cultural history. Oliver Marshall is an independent historian based in Sussex, England, who has published on South American and international migration history. He has been a research fellow at the University of London's Institute of Latin American Studies and at the University of Oxford's Centre for Brazilian Studies and its Centre for Latin American Studies.