STEFAN Zweig is a name to be reckoned with, a name you cannot possibly ignore. The author died more than half a century ago and seems to have found a second bout of fame, in all probability triggered off by the recent release of the new Hollywood movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Those who are approaching Zweig with the musical score of the movie still ringing in their ears had better be warned that it is not based on but only inspired by the atmosphere of his stories. The affiliation is weak, to say the least. Still, the “new favourite writer” is how the film-maker has described the author, and this is how he is likely to be remembered.

Those who want to discover the world of Zweig are best advised to read the delightful new edition, The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig, translated by Anthea Bell. Readers who already know his work will be able to reconfirm their admiration for a writer meant to be cherished, while others who are approaching his stories for the first time are going in for a discovery as they will be delighted by one of the great European masters of the naturalistic mode.

This volume steers clear of any preface or introduction. It doesn’t even provide a biographical sketch but plunges the reader headlong into the stories, to sort out things for him or herself.

Zweig has been described as “an exemplary man of letters in the traditional sense.” In 2012, Leo Carey devoted a feature to Zweig for The New Yorker titled, ‘The Escape Artist: the Death and Life of Stefan Zweig,’ with a special emphasis on death. In the words of Carey, “Zweig’s death arguably marked the high point of his literary standing: to most English-speaking readers, he is now little more than a name. Yet, for a time, in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, he was the most translated writer in Europe.”

In a similar vein, novelist John Fowles, in his introduction to the Penguin Modern Classic edition of Zweig’s The Royal Game and Other Stories, describes the “prodigious reputation” Zweig had during the last years of his life as “arguably the most widely read and translated serious author in the world.” However, there was a sharp decline in his reputation: “Stefan Zweig has suffered, since his death in 1942, a darker eclipse than any other famous writer of this century.”

The tide may be turning as the new translation of his short fiction indicates. The New York Review of Books includes the best of his books in attractive formats and a new biography authored by Oliver Matuschek is also available. All hail Stefan Zweig as he climbs out of undeserved obscurity!

Zweig belonged to Vienna at the height of its fame and glory and included Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Thomas Mann among his admirers and friends; he even gave the eulogy at Freud’s funeral. He wrote, lectured and travelled at a phenomenal rate. However, in spite of his Jewish origins, he was slow in condemning the rise of Nazi political power in Germany and that may well have been the single biggest mistake of his life. Eventually he had to face exile and the final dramatic scene of his life was enacted in Brazil.

Zweig and his second wife took a large dose of barbiturates and went on to sleep forever; a shocked world read the newspaper headlines the next day. Zweig was given a state funeral but his saddest words came in his suicide note: “the world of my own language sank and was lost to me, and my spiritual homeland Europe destroyed itself.” The world as it was before the senseless destruction was the world so brilliantly caught in Zweig’s fiction.

Sharp observations, a marvellous eye for detail, and psychological insights into the inner workings of his characters’ hearts — these are the qualities which make his stories stand out. An early story such as ‘The Governess’ displays these qualities remarkably well. A sudden crisis in the nursery finds the children lost and confused and their governess exposed. The children learn the cruel and contradictory ways of the world of adults as the story recaptures the moment in a perfect manner. But while some of the early stories are a treat, the real jewel is the novella, Letter from an Unknown Woman. The name catches the irony and at the end the reader is left wondering how anybody could consider the woman to be unknown. The selfishness of the man and the sincere and self-sacrificing devotion of the woman are heartbreaking. It is one of the most moving stories and I still find it imprinted on my mind, many, many years after I first read it as an impressionable young man.

‘Amok’ is another story which will linger in your mind long after you close the book. The explanation of the character who has literally “run amok” and the excruciating pain of his self-afflicted journey make the frame inside which another, darker tale is woven. This is a tale of forbidden passion, recklessness, bodily manipulation and its horrible aftermath set in the lush world of the tropics. It reminds one of the Malay tales of Somerset Maugham, with the exception that Maugham never penned anything so horrifyingly powerful.

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman is another powerful novella which moves slowly in the languid world of the rich and builds up to a maddening climax.

There is a remarkable variety of scale and setting in these stories. Some stand out, there are others which one can breeze through, but there is never a false note. There is no story which does not hold some sort of surprise for the reader. However, I am perplexed by the absence of one story in particular from this collection, the fascinating tale of a man who learns to play chess with himself in order to preserve his sanity. It is the title story in the Penguin collection of Zweig’s short fiction, The Royal Game. If the undisputed masterpiece is included in another edition, then how can this one be called Collected Stories? Here is a riddle around which Zweig could have weaved a tale of suspense, intrigue and final discovery.

The reviewer is a critic and fiction writer

The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

(SHORT STORIES)

Translated by Anthea Bell

Pushkin Press, London

ISBN 9781782270034

720pp.