The first of these two Stefan Zweig tales, The Invisible Collection, is about a blind collector of rare prints who does not realize that his priceless Durers and Rembrandts have been sold by his family and replaced by blank sheets of paper. The second is the touching tale of Buchmendel, an old bookdealer who is himself a universal catalogue, entirely devoted to his trade. Zweig is a bestseller in Europe; Pushkin Press/Turtle Point are re-introducing his work to American readers.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Stefan Zweig, novelist, biographer, poet and translator, was born in 1881 in Vienna. With the rise of Nazism, he moved from Salzburg to London, New York and Brazil where he died in 1942.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exquisite stories from a European master,
By Jeff Abell (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Invisible Collection (Old ISBN) (Paperback)
During his lifetime (1881-1942) Stefan Zweig was one of the most celebrated authors in Europe, and anyone who ventures into his writings will understand why. Zweig's insights into and compassion for his fellow human beings is both astonishing and deeply moving. These two tales are among his most beautiful. "The Invisible Collection" is told by an art dealer, who sets out to purchase a print collection from an old man, only to find himself coerced by the man's family into complicity in a heart-breaking game of deception. (The story is more poignant if you know that Zweig himself was an avid collector of autographs and manuscripts.) "Buchmandel" is an equally wrenching tale of a old Jewish man who has a faultless memory for books, who's life falls apart with the advent of World War I. (Imagine a kind of East-European version of Borges' "Funes the Memorious.") These two tales take the art of story-telling to its most refined state, and you'll understand why Zweig's work was considered some of the greatest writing of its time.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Two pearls,
By
This review is from: Invisible Collection (Old ISBN) (Paperback)
This small book contains two of the most successful stories of Stefan Zweig.
They are both inherently anchored in German history. In 'The invisible collection', an old and blind man shows his collection of magnificent drawings to a friend. He didn't know that his wife and daughter had to sell them in order to survive during the hyperinflation period in Germany. They replaced them with white papers. In 'Buchmendel', a jewish literature lover takes always the same seat in a pub. He is sent to a concentration camp. When he comes back, the owner of the pub refuses to give him his old place for racial reasons. After his death a friend searches for old clients of the pub who knew him. He discovers a whole bunch of very rare books. Both stories are written in dashing prose. They hypnotyze the reader by unexspected events and excel through the painting of intimate emotions and excellent characterisations. But most of all, they reveal the tragic influence of 'History' on the fate of normal people who were great on their own. Two pearls.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I don't get it.,
This review is from: The Invisible Collection/Buchmendel (Paperback)
The existence of this slim volume baffles me. Alright, it is certainly true that Zweig's stories, many of which are absolutely marvelous, are in dire need of a re-release that would hopefully do something to alleviate their obscurity. Very well; perhaps the editors were operating out of this noble idea. Why, then, did they release only two Zweig stories, out of about twenty? And why did they make those two "Invisible Collection" and "Buchmendel"? Granted, both of them are good; the first is even great, certainly one of the man's best. But why only them? And furthermore, why charge the price of a full-length book for such an obviously sparse selection? I don't get it at all.Bad judgment, certainly. However, it must be noted that neither of these two stories is included in the _other_ incomplete compilation, The Royal Game And Other Stories. Thus, if you liked those (and I don't see how you couldn't have), this book will make a good complement. However, even so, there are _still_ others that are in need of reprint but are included neither here nor there. Argh!
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
