Ostend: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the

Ostend: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the Dark

Itâ€™s the summer of 1936, and the writer Stefan Zweig is in crisis. His German publisher no longer wants him, his marriage is collapsing, and his house in Austriaâ€”searched by the police two years earlierâ€”no longer feels like home. Heâ€™s been dreaming of Ostend, the Belgian beach town that is a paradise of promenades, parasols, and old friends. So he journeys there with his lover, Lotte Altmann, and reunites with fellow writer and semi-estranged close friend Joseph Roth, who is himself about to fall in love. For a moment, they create a fragile haven. But as Europe begins to crumble around them, the writers find themselves trapped on vacation, in exile, watching the world burn. In Ostend, Volker Weidermann lyrically recounts â€œthe summer before the dark,â€ when a coterie of artists, intellectuals, drunks, revolutionaries, and madmen found themselves in limbo while Europe teetered on the edge of fascism and total war.
Â
Ostend is the true story of two of the twentieth centuryâ€™s great writers, written with a novelistâ€™s eye for pacing, chronology, and languageâ€”a dazzling work of historical nonfiction.
Â
(Translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway)

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer Pantheon
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2016-01-26
Format Kindle eBook

Ostend: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the Dark