The Impossible Exile

February 24, 2014
Drawing on archival and personal material, Prochnik (Putnam Camp) examines the life of exiled Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) to shed light on the affliction of exile that redefined the lives and works of many intellectuals during WWII. Perhaps best known for his novellas, Zweig, who was Jewish, fled from his native Vienna and spent time abroad (New York, Rio de Janeiro), but was never able to adjust. While Zweig struggled to adapt to life in new countries, he also faced pressures as a high-profile intellectual who was expected to act as a political savior. Meanwhile, he continued to produce new work in a language that had been redefined by the Nazis and gradually went from being one of the world’s most widely read authors to one of diminished recognition. The book pays close attention to Zweig’s two wives: the first, Frederike, who would write a memoir that doubled as his biography; and Lotte, his amanuensis who would commit suicide by his side. Though Prochnik acts as a guiding consciousness throughout the book, he sometimes enters the narrative as a character, sharing personal anecdotes that provides glimpses into modern-day Austria. Though the book would have benefitted from more detailed discussions of Zweig’s fiction and why it warrants revival, this original and often ruminative study should find an appreciative audience. Fans of filmmaker Wes Anderson might also be interested, as Anderson recently said that his new film, Grand Budapest Hotel, is “our own version of a Zweig story.” Photos. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency.

March 1, 2014
Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) stands in for Europe's uprooted intellectuals in this elegiac portrait by Prochnik (In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise, 2010, etc.). Zweig was one of the most famous and successful authors in the world in the 1920s and early '30s, best known for his novellas and breezy biographies of historical figures like Erasmus and Marie Antoinette. His fellow Viennese intellectuals might have slightly disdained his wild popularity--except that everyone loved this slight, dapper man with his "genius for friendship." When the Nazis came to power, Zweig was in a much better position that most, with plenty of money to fund his travels as he roamed from Switzerland to southern France to England and the United States in search of a refuge from the fascist madness. His relative comfort, however, could not make up for the trauma of being ejected from the culture that he, like many other German-speaking Jews, had believed belonged to them as well. "The world we loved has gone beyond recall," he gloomily told a fellow refugee in Manhattan in 1941. "We shall be homeless in all countries. We have no present and no future." Prochnik, himself a polymath writer with European Jewish roots, was prompted by the story of his own family, which also fled Nazi-occupied Vienna, to investigate Zweig's experience of exile. Unable to envision himself settled in America despite four stays in New York, Zweig finally moved to a small village in Brazil in 1941, hoping for peace in which to write. Prochnik sensitively considers his final books--the poignant memoir The World of Yesterday (1942) and Brazil: Land of the Future (1941), which determinedly celebrated his adopted country's embrace of "the humanist values his native Europe had so wretchedly betrayed." In the end, accumulating losses and dwindling hopes of a better tomorrow drove Zweig to commit suicide not long after his 60th birthday. Intelligent, reflective and deeply sad portrait of a man tragically cut adrift by history.

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February 1, 2014

Little remembered in America, Austrian novelist, playwright, biographer, and intellectual Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) is still well known in Europe, his books routinely best sellers there, observes Prochnik (editor-at-large, Cabinet; In Pursuit of Silence; Putnam Camp) in his assessment of Zweig's legacy. In the 1930s, before the rise of Nazism in Europe, the prolific Zweig (Decisive Moments in History; Beware of Pity) was one of the most popular writers in the world. But the last years of Zweig's life were characterized by exile and a fall from grace remarkable--even unprecedented--for an artist of his stature, as he moved from Europe to America to Brazil seeking respite from the erosion of civilization as he knew it. In the autobiographical The World of Yesterday, Zweig describes his increased feeling of detachment as the experience of being pulled "from all roots and from the very earth which nurtures them." Along with his wife, Lotte, he committed suicide in Petropolis, Brazil, in 1942. VERDICT Accessible, compelling, and thorough without being pedantic, this literary and cultural biography offers keen insight into Zweig's life, particularly his final years. Readers interested in the evolution of literary and intellectual ideas in turn-of-the-century Europe or the biography of a largely forgotten literary force will appreciate Prochnik's compassionate treatment.--Patrick A. Smith, Bainbridge Coll., GA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2014
Once renowned, then long forgotten, the forever poignant Viennese writer and humanist Stefan Zweig (18811942) is now the focus of a revival. His books are back in print, Wes Anderson pays homage to Zweig in his film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Prochnik (In Pursuit of Silence, 2010) presents an exceptionally astute, affecting, and beautifully composed portrait and analysis of Zweig and his cherished and lost world. We learn that ZweigJewish, wealthy, cultured, cosmopolitan, and generousrejected the conventions of his social class as he devoted himself to writing and became a passionate collector and a consummate networker, forging connections among the intellectual and artistic luminaries of Europe. Zweig reveled in Viennese caf' society even as he craved privacy and silence. An international literary celebrity, who believed in the unifying power of education and art, Zweig was forced into exile as the Nazis first banned, then burned his books. Adrift in London, New York, and Brazil with Lotte, his much younger second wife, Zweig was spiritually shattered by the Nazi genocide and the arbitrariness of survival, gripped by a depthless despair that culminated in the couple's tragic suicides. Prochnik is so empathically attuned and committed to the full sweep of Zweig's by turns glimmering and sorrowful story that nothing goes unexamined or unfelt in this brilliant and haunting biography.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)