The World of Yesterday

The World of Yesterday (1942) is Zweig's autobiography, completed just before his suicide in Brazilian exile. It is a portrait of the world he lost: the Vienna of Brahms and Freud, the literary cafés and opera houses, the cosmopolitan Europe of open borders and shared culture that was destroyed by nationalism and war. Written with characteristic elegance and warmth, it is both a personal memoir and an elegy for an entire civilization.