In the Future of Yesterday: A Life of Stefan Zweig

A refreshing approach to the life and work of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.

In the Future of Yesterday delves into Stefan Zweig’s considerable contribution to world literature, rooted in the Austro-Jewish tradition. His privileged social background saw him embrace European culture and cosmopolitanism. A world traveler from the outset, he liked to uproot himself, but whether he stayed in London, New York, or, eventually, in Brazil, his literary baggage continued to contain the flair of fin de siècle Vienna.

This biography re-examines Zweig’s influential time in England and offers new insights into his final years in the United States and Brazil. It discusses some of his prolific literary output in relation to his life and explores his political views on Europe, Zionism, and the world order in greater depth than previous appraisals of Zweig’s life.

The book also considers the many contradictions in Zweig’s views and attitudes, which included an initial, and surprising, leniency towards fascism. Most importantly, though, In the Future of Yesterday presents Zweig as a towering figure of a form of writing that was bursting with life and that was written in the knowledge that there can only be a future if we remain conscious of the past. In that sense, Zweig is a writer for our time.

Rüdiger Görner was professor of German and comparative literature at Queen Mary, University of London. The founding director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, his books include biographies of Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Trakl, and Oskar Kokoschka. He has been the recipient of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.