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The World of Yesterday

Memoirs of a European

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The World of Yesterday

By: Stefan Zweig, Anthea Bell - translator
Narrated by: David Horovitch
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About this listen

Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, recalls the golden age of prewar Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall with the onset of two world wars. Zweig's passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction. It is an unusually humane account of Europe from the closing years of the 19th century through to World War II, seen through the eyes of one of the most famous writers of his era. Zweig's books (novels, biographies, essays) were translated into numerous languages, and he moved in the highest literary circles; he also encountered many leading political and social figures of his day.

The World of Yesterday is a remarkable, totally engrossing history. This translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell captures the spirit of Zweig's writing in arguably his most important work, completed shortly before his tragic death in 1942. It is read with sympathy and understanding by David Horovitch.

©1942 Fischer Verlag. 2011 Anthea Bell (translation) (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd Art & Literature Authors War Heartfelt Inspiring Thought-Provoking Imperialism Italy

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Critic reviews

"One of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century." (David Hare)
"Zweig's celebration of the brotherhood of peoples reminds us that there is another way." ( The Nation)
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This is a work of such clear and fluent language (excellent translation!) and the narrative is concise and carefully composed. It provokes thought on so many themes (the idea of a united Europe, freedom of movement, the intellectual life, what it is to be a European) that still resonate today. His reflections on how he writes, on his friendships with European intellectuals, artists, musicians and thinkers of the day, stimulate the thinking and interest in the reader. And, his frank observations of his own and other’s reactions to the advent of the First World War, the experience of hyper-inflation and the later rise of Fascism, are so open and human, that they enhance our understanding of what it felt like to live in those times and bring colour and pathos to the history of the periods.

Finally, I must praise the narrator for a marvellous reading of this work. His tone matches the quality of the writing perfectly, and, for once, nothing is mispronounced!!!

Bravo!!!!

Brilliant!

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This is the best book that I have had on Audible, with excellent narration and sympathetic translation from the original German. Both get across the nuances and meaning of Zweig.

I am not entirely sure how I came across this work, as despite his interwar popularity Zweig is little known in Britain, and that is certainly our loss. The author describes 40 years of history, commencing in Imperial Vienna, and winding up as a stateless refugee. His comfortable background as an assimilated and seemingly fairly secular Jew is perhaps rather atypical and certainly bourgeois. Nonetheless he is an astute commentator on events, particularly in highbrow culture and literature, with personal contact with many leading lights of European civilisation.

He is not interested in politics, yet politics become interested in him, though even when the Nazis banned him they could not find a critical word about Germany in his works. He tells an interesting anecdote about correspondence with Mussolini, who was it seems a fan willing to pull strings at his request.

The first war catches him by surprise, but he sees early on the drift to the second world war with great foreboding as a result of that shattered innocence. His tales of the gradual decline of internationalism and tolerance are a timeless tale that is equally relevant to the world of today. This though is not a political of historical treatise on the origins of war so much as an individuals observations. There is very little on his private life, and though he describes the hardships of the collapse of Imperial Austria well, Spanish Flu is never mentioned either. I wonder if Covid will be forgotten too.

It is sad to hear his descriptions of stateless Jewish refugees in the final chapter, but little did he know when writing in 1941 that these were the lucky ones. We lost so much as a continent with the Shoah, a rich European Jewish culture, and this book is a fine memorial for that loss. I wish Zweig had lived long enough to see Israel founded, but I think as a European he would have been most glad to see the European Union uniting the fractious nations of Europe, and forming a nascent European democracy.

A mournful memoir of what we have lost

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The World of Yesterday feels eerily prophetic and relevant to our own times. It offers a dire warning of where the polarisation of politics, populist political leaders, and rampant nationalism can lead. Zweig contrasts the civilising values of the pan European movement which held sway among many Continental artist, writers and thinkers before the first world war with the eruption of irrationality in politics and culture in the 1930s to great effect. A wonderful, profound book, expertly narrated.

The World of Yesterday, a warning for today

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a beautifully written piece that conjures up a world lost to us by the violence of war, and what it means to be at the mercy and centre of such horrors, and yet a beautiful book. history as it should be taught.

a Remembrance of History

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This memoir of Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) is another of Ukemi’s treasures. Zweig was the most important writer of his day writing in German, but his work was banned by the Nazis. Translated into English, his memoir The World of Yesterday was rescued by the Pushkin Press only within the last ten years. The translation by Anthea Bell (who concludes this beautifully sympathetic, exactly right narration by David Horovitch) is what a first class translation should be: it’s as though this is just how Zweig wrote it.

Zweig’s world of yesterday is the ‘golden age of security’ of the Austro Hungarian Empire in which he grew up, a wonderful time for Viennese high culture of music, opera, art and conversation provided mainly by Jewish intellectuals, a world Zweig creates in all it richness. As a child he met Brahms, looked on actors as supernatural beings and was fired with a passion for ‘things of the mind.’

His musings over the changing mores as time passed have a universal appeal. Growing up, women of his class were chastely swathed from head to foot, always chaperoned, and bridegrooms would have no idea of what was underneath – a purity which existed alongside thriving and rampant prostitution. Later women cut their hair, discarded their corsets, played tennis and, even if some did have stones thrown at them for doing so, rode bicycles. The insights he gives into his own writing explain the slimness of his novels: he wanted to intensify the ‘inner architecture’ of his writing, to know more than he showed, to hone and omit. A good lesson for writers to absorb.

The memoir is filled with vignettes of great names, from Gorky, Yeats and Strauss to Rilke, Ravel and Valéry– and a host of other Europeans I’d never heard of and are now, as Zweig says, mainly forgotten. His portrait of Freud is a real person, suffering but determined as he neared death; with James Joyce he discusses German and Italian translations of words from Ulysses. His treasured collections included the quill pen and candlestick of his greatest icon, Goethe. He travelled widely, from Paris to America and even in India, observing and analysing with telling detail, as when he describes the peasants doffing their caps before artworks in the Hermitage in Leningrad.

But ‘great evil swept over humanity’ with the onset of WW1, after which he returned to a Salzburg in his ‘poor plundered unhappy country’ where everything was either ‘broken or stolen’ and hyperinflation raged: squirrel for Sunday lunch, frozen potatoes, trousers made of old sacks, treasured possessions sold in markets. But he noted too how real value was found in friendship, art and music. His final heartbreak was the start of the rise of Nazi Germany with its systematic destruction of all that he held dear in humanity and the loss of his hopes for a unified Europe. These were horrors enough, but he didn’t live to see the worst.

The history in this memoir is all too familiar, but Zweig’s telling makes it fresh and new. The World of Yesterday is a unique listening experience.

The Brink of Destruction

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a wonderfull story, beautiful written and ofgreatest actuality at present times. An insight into working ofcreative mind and a fascinating epoch.

an extraordinary insight into a man and his time

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I knew nothing about Zweig when I started listening to it (didn't even know he was a writer). the book was really enjoyable and felt really relevant at times as we stand an the edge of WWIII.

Really enjoyable.

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I really enjoy zwiegs style of writing and his accounts are fascinating to learn about, but it is of course just his version of the truth. I only learned later about how much he was actually involved in the early propaganda efforts.

Fascinating insights into the life of pre war Europeans

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I must admit that I'd never heard of Stefan Zweig and wasn't sure about buying this book but thought it might be interesting. I found it completely gripping. It's not an autobiography as such as it gives very little away about Zweig as a person but it gives an amazing insight into what historical events felt like at the time to someone who lived through them. For example Zweig was convinced that the states wouldn't go to war in 1914 as he thought the states would come to their senses and prevent it. It's also interesting that the memoir was written (and Zweig committed suicide) in 1942 so it was written before the outcome of WW2. The narration was perfect for the book too. Really recommend for anyone interested in this period of history.

A Unique Book Brilliantly Performed

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This book is a great review of life in Vienna (and in Europe) in the period from just before the First World War to the event of the Second World War. It is a moving and thought-provoking memoir by a writer who is sadly much neglected in the UK. It surveys cultural, political, historical and biographical details commenting on art, politics, music and daily life. It is a moving account of one man’s experience and his perception of what is happening for others, most notably the Jewish people of Europe. It is the work of a man with remarkable ideals and of someone who (as his eventual suicide suggests) becomes very disillusioned by the historical events of the period. Many of his observations are still relevant today - reflections on intolerance; political egoism; creativity and destructiveness; how the actions of one dangerous narcissist can have disastrous consequences for us all.

The book is read with great clarity and appropriate sobriety by David Horovitch. I enjoyed his performance and will certainly listen to more of his readings.

Great Survey of Europe

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