An original study of exile, told through the biography of Austrian writer Stefan
Zweig, the man who inspired The Grand Budapest Hotel
By the 1930s, Stefan Zwe
ig had become the most widely translated living author in the world. His novels,
short stories, and biographies were so compelling that they became instant best
sellers. Zweig was also an intellectual and a lover of all the arts, high and l
ow. Yet after Hitler s rise to power, this celebrated writer who had dedicated s
o much energy to promoting international humanism plummeted, in a matter of a fe
w years, into an increasingly isolated exile from London to Bath to New York Cit
y, then Ossining, Rio, and finally Petropolis where, in 1942, in a cramped bunga
low, he killed himself.
