The Governess and Other Stories

This selection of novellas, translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell, begins with' Did He Do It?' A curious whodunit set in England, it nonetheless has the extraordinary psychological insight that typifies Zweig's best work.'The Miracles of Life' explores the conflicting forces of belief and art, love and obsession, amidst the religious struggles of Renaissance Antwerp. Finally, two Viennese stories,'The Governess' and'Downfall of the Heart' are shattering in their portrayal of disillusionment - two little girls move from cosy chidlhood to the cold glare of adulthood in a single morning, and a father's heart breaks irrevocably. Wide-ranging and compelling, this is another brilliant collection of stories from Austria's rediscovered master of twentieth-century European literature.

Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a translator and later as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoying literary fame. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in bed in an apparent double suicide.