This is the first English translation of Zweig’s writings on his travels in Europe. Representing a lifetime’s observations, this collection paints a rich and sensitive picture of Europe before the Second World War. For the insatiably curious Zweig, travel was both a necessary cultural education and a personal balm for the depression he experienced when rooted in one place for too long. He spent much of his life weaving between the countries of Central Europe, visiting authors and friends, exploring the continent in the heyday of international rail travel.

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. He wrote prolifically, and was closely acquainted with many of the leading artistic figures of his day, including Rainer Maria Rilke, André Gide, Emile Verhaeren and Thomas Mann. He fled Austria in 1934, following Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. He then lived in England (in London and from 1939 in Bath) before moving to the United States in 1940. In 1941 he went to Brazil, where in 1942 he and his second wife committed suicide together, despairing at the future of Europe and its culture. His autobiography The World of Yesterday is a paean to the European culture he considered lost.