---
product_id: 6309949
title: "The World of Yesterday"
price: "€ 40.87"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.de/products/6309949-the-world-of-yesterday
store_origin: DE
region: Germany
---

# The World of Yesterday

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## Description

The World of Yesterday [Zweig, Stefan, Bell, Anthea] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The World of Yesterday

Review: Thank you, Herr Zweig! - This is a wonderful, heartbreaking memoir of, first, Vienna before WWI from the viewpoint of a child; then all of literary Europe between the two world wars from the viewpoint of an increasingly successful writer, and finally of a stateless man in England, witnessing the irrepressible forces of the second world war about to overtake everything. During his adulthood, he also visited Russia, India, Argentina, Brazil, and the US, all largely for literary purposes. Two parts I thought were a bit unintentionally funny: early on he goes on at length about how healthy it was for the sexes to have more freedom to commingle, and he states that when young men and women were kept so separate, and sex was so forbidden outside of marriage, pornography was a terrible problem, debasing both sexes. Well, I'm afraid that the increased commingling of the sexes didn't exactly reduce that particular problem... And again, there was a part where he really goes on and on talking about how one of the main reasons his writing was so successful was that he loved to edit out unnecessary or redundant parts of his initial drafts. But that very section of his book is incredibly repetitive! :) And indeed, several sections are -- as if he couldn't resist coming up with yet one more way of saying the exact same thing. However - I wouldn't let this stop anyone from reading the book. It's delightfully written, and it's about such an important period of time in European history. He had intellectual/literary relationships with many important people, from Strauss to Freud, and if for those recollections alone, the memoir is quite valuable.
Review: Farewell Vienna - Hello Mr. Trump - A Trip Through Time and Back - This is the pre-suicide autobiography of accomplished Viennese writer Stefan Zweig, who lived through the final dissolution of the old Austrian Hapsburg dynasty and ended his life in 1943 before the end of WWII. The original was written in German, which must have been exceedingly difficult to translate adequately, given its complex thought-streams and complicated sentence structure. So first off, an admiring nod to the translator, Anthea Bell, who did a masterful job of conveying the heart and soul of this book to readers of the English language and supplying excellent background in her translator's note which opens the book. Zweig was a man of many faces -- brilliant, yes! and also exceptionally self-aware. The book opens with a fascinating account of his Jewish boyhood in Vienna, his early training in the rigorous and pedantic German schools, and builds to a climax as he reflects on his experiences as a disenfranchised member of the Jewish artistic community during and after the Nazi take-over in Germany and Austria. He was conscious of the deep changes that were undermining the old regime in his native Austria and in Europe, particularly the rise of fascist sympathizers in many places in Europe during his lifetime. The tension was palpable in his haunting descriptions of life on the edge of communal insanity as the Hitler machinery marched through Europe in the late 1930’s and struck down one basic human freedom after another. It was an insidious and covert operation that became obvious to most only after-the-fact. All his books were ultimately banned by the Nazis and he fled the country and lived in exile for several years. He seems to have largely discounted his ultimate success as a major contributor to the historical record of his day while he was living through the process, chagrined that he could do nothing about it except to experience it deeply and shoulder his burden as a super-sensitive soul. In many ways, as I read through this rich and elegant exploration of his life and times in Vienna, Paris, Italy and America, I quietly sympathized with him at the loss of his beloved country to war and hate. I can almost hear his stark voice commenting here that he was much more rooted in literature and philosophy than he was in routine daily life, and that he expected his artistic and scholarly efforts, small as he may have viewed them, to affect or change the course of world history for the better. He had maximum refinement but lacked the common touch at a time when common people were rising and trying to upend the old regime in Austria and in so doing, opening themselves to the Nazi take-over. In light of his imminent suicide shortly after completing this book, it is fair to assume that he felt adrift on this planet as a writer who could no longer grasp what went so terribly wrong all at once -- or how to amend it with all his worldly knowledge and massive literary skills. The realization that his past conditioning was no longer sufficient to sustain him must have been personally wrenching. In his mind, a new day was coming unbidden, and with it a profound shift in mores. In my own life, with the ascent of Trumpism and its blatant disregard for human rights, it felt like deja vu to absorb this book, which is not only a shout-out to our collective past as scholars and thinkers, writers, musicians and artists of the sort who were at home in pre- WWI Vienna, but also a potent reminder that a shift in culture can be ruthless and insane before the “new normal” becomes apparent. It is both a swan song and a warning – and that is primarily why our book club chose to experience this book together. As a sympathetic portrait of a man and a world in acute distress, it is helpful to read it while trying to live through the crude and unconscious political agendas of our own times. It sparked intense debates and fruitful discussion among our group. Take some time to read through it slowly and let it sink in -- it is a complex book of many layers and uncannily prescient.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #32,131 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #69 in Author Biographies #106 in Historical European Biographies (Books) #825 in Memoirs (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (1,774) |
| Dimensions  | 5.5 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches |
| Edition  | Reprint |
| ISBN-10  | 0803226616 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0803226616 |
| Item Weight  | 1.24 pounds |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 472 pages |
| Publication date  | May 1, 2013 |
| Publisher  | University of Nebraska Press |

## Images

![The World of Yesterday - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81eo7mB-1LL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Thank you, Herr Zweig!
*by B***E on January 15, 2026*

This is a wonderful, heartbreaking memoir of, first, Vienna before WWI from the viewpoint of a child; then all of literary Europe between the two world wars from the viewpoint of an increasingly successful writer, and finally of a stateless man in England, witnessing the irrepressible forces of the second world war about to overtake everything. During his adulthood, he also visited Russia, India, Argentina, Brazil, and the US, all largely for literary purposes. Two parts I thought were a bit unintentionally funny: early on he goes on at length about how healthy it was for the sexes to have more freedom to commingle, and he states that when young men and women were kept so separate, and sex was so forbidden outside of marriage, pornography was a terrible problem, debasing both sexes. Well, I'm afraid that the increased commingling of the sexes didn't exactly reduce that particular problem... And again, there was a part where he really goes on and on talking about how one of the main reasons his writing was so successful was that he loved to edit out unnecessary or redundant parts of his initial drafts. But that very section of his book is incredibly repetitive! :) And indeed, several sections are -- as if he couldn't resist coming up with yet one more way of saying the exact same thing. However - I wouldn't let this stop anyone from reading the book. It's delightfully written, and it's about such an important period of time in European history. He had intellectual/literary relationships with many important people, from Strauss to Freud, and if for those recollections alone, the memoir is quite valuable.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Farewell Vienna - Hello Mr. Trump - A Trip Through Time and Back
*by A***A on September 25, 2017*

This is the pre-suicide autobiography of accomplished Viennese writer Stefan Zweig, who lived through the final dissolution of the old Austrian Hapsburg dynasty and ended his life in 1943 before the end of WWII. The original was written in German, which must have been exceedingly difficult to translate adequately, given its complex thought-streams and complicated sentence structure. So first off, an admiring nod to the translator, Anthea Bell, who did a masterful job of conveying the heart and soul of this book to readers of the English language and supplying excellent background in her translator's note which opens the book. Zweig was a man of many faces -- brilliant, yes! and also exceptionally self-aware. The book opens with a fascinating account of his Jewish boyhood in Vienna, his early training in the rigorous and pedantic German schools, and builds to a climax as he reflects on his experiences as a disenfranchised member of the Jewish artistic community during and after the Nazi take-over in Germany and Austria. He was conscious of the deep changes that were undermining the old regime in his native Austria and in Europe, particularly the rise of fascist sympathizers in many places in Europe during his lifetime. The tension was palpable in his haunting descriptions of life on the edge of communal insanity as the Hitler machinery marched through Europe in the late 1930’s and struck down one basic human freedom after another. It was an insidious and covert operation that became obvious to most only after-the-fact. All his books were ultimately banned by the Nazis and he fled the country and lived in exile for several years. He seems to have largely discounted his ultimate success as a major contributor to the historical record of his day while he was living through the process, chagrined that he could do nothing about it except to experience it deeply and shoulder his burden as a super-sensitive soul. In many ways, as I read through this rich and elegant exploration of his life and times in Vienna, Paris, Italy and America, I quietly sympathized with him at the loss of his beloved country to war and hate. I can almost hear his stark voice commenting here that he was much more rooted in literature and philosophy than he was in routine daily life, and that he expected his artistic and scholarly efforts, small as he may have viewed them, to affect or change the course of world history for the better. He had maximum refinement but lacked the common touch at a time when common people were rising and trying to upend the old regime in Austria and in so doing, opening themselves to the Nazi take-over. In light of his imminent suicide shortly after completing this book, it is fair to assume that he felt adrift on this planet as a writer who could no longer grasp what went so terribly wrong all at once -- or how to amend it with all his worldly knowledge and massive literary skills. The realization that his past conditioning was no longer sufficient to sustain him must have been personally wrenching. In his mind, a new day was coming unbidden, and with it a profound shift in mores. In my own life, with the ascent of Trumpism and its blatant disregard for human rights, it felt like deja vu to absorb this book, which is not only a shout-out to our collective past as scholars and thinkers, writers, musicians and artists of the sort who were at home in pre- WWI Vienna, but also a potent reminder that a shift in culture can be ruthless and insane before the “new normal” becomes apparent. It is both a swan song and a warning – and that is primarily why our book club chose to experience this book together. As a sympathetic portrait of a man and a world in acute distress, it is helpful to read it while trying to live through the crude and unconscious political agendas of our own times. It sparked intense debates and fruitful discussion among our group. Take some time to read through it slowly and let it sink in -- it is a complex book of many layers and uncannily prescient.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Beautiful Memoir of a Beautiful Time, Tinged With Tragedy
*by E***D on January 13, 2026*

I must admit that I had only heard of Stefan Zwieg, one of the most important writers of his time, from Rod Dreher’s blog, in context of Zwieg’s memoir capturing the grandeur of Europe pre-Great War, the socioeconomic chaos endured by the losers of that conflict, and the lead up to WWII. The book was published in 1942, the year Zweig and his second wife committed suicide in Brazil, by then nationless and stripped of nearly everything. Although these conflicts are foreshadowed throughout the book, it’s about so much more than that. It’s about European civilization at its heights. Any romantic who imagines sitting in Parisian literary salons, listening to opera in Vienna, or meeting great artists in their turn of the century studios will love this book. It’s filled with many slice of life observations about the mores and manners of people living in that time and place. The list of famous writers, poets, musicians and artists Zwieg rubbed elbows with throughout Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France and England is incredible, a who’s who of the time. Ravel, Toscanini, Rodin, Dali, HG Wells, Freud, Thomas Mann, Theodor Herzl, Richard Strauss, Shaw - this list goes on and on - were his peers, friends and acquaintances. This is a lovely book written by a seemingly lovely man devoted to art and culture and most of all, Europe, which one reads with a constant sense of foreboding, given the two calamities which befell the Continent. Barbara Tuchman’s “Proud Tower” is a masterpiece of history if you wish to learn about the socioeconomic conditions which roiled the Belle Epoch. But if one wants a slice of life, an insight into how so many great artists of the time lived and thought, this book is a must-read.

## Frequently Bought Together

- The World of Yesterday
- The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig
- Beware of Pity (New York Review Classics)

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*Last updated: 2026-02-09*