Autorentext

Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna. He was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig became an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas. In 1934, he left Austria to live in England and New York--and produced his most celebrated works: his only novel, Beware of Pity, and his memoir, The World of Yesterday. He settled in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Will Stone born 1966, is a poet, essayist and translator. His translations from French and German include works by Joseph Roth, Georg Trakl, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gérard de Nerval, Georg Simmel, Maurice Betz, Guy de Pourtalès, Emile Verhaeren and Georges Rodenbach. His recent translations include a collection of letters by Rilke (Seagull Books, 2024) and a collection of stories by Guy de Maupassant (Pushkin, 2027).

Klappentext

A brilliant and impassioned biography of one of the founding fathers of humanism, from one of its greatest defenders in the 20th century Written during the Second World War, Zweig's typically passionate and readable biography of Michel de Montaigne, is also a heartfelt argument for the importance of intellectual freedom, tolerance and humanism. Zweig draws strong parallels between Montaigne's age, when Europe was torn in two by conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism, and his own, in which the twin fanaticisms of Fascism and Communism were on the verge of destroying the pan-continental liberal culture he was born into, and loved dearly. Just as Montaigne sought to remain aloof from the factionalism of his day, so Zweig tried to the last to defend his freedom of thought, and argue for peace and compromise. One of the final works Zweig wrote before his suicide, this is both a brilliantly impassioned portrait of a great mind, and a moving plea for tolerance in a world ruled by cruelty.