"My spiritual home, Europe, having destroyed itself," Zweig wrote, "I think it better to conclude in good time and in upright bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the greatest good on earth. On a liner bound for Buenos Aires, a boorish chess grandmaster is challenged by a diffident stranger, a Viennese lawyer held in solitary confinement by the Gestapo with nothing but a chess manual to preserve his sanity...After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the Axis powers appeared invincible. The framing narrative, set in the edgy days of the Munich agreement, makes explicit the connection between the failure of empathy in the personal sphere and the wider political catastrophe then engulfing Europe.On the outbreak of the Second World War, Zweig and Lotte sailed for Brazil, where they settled near Rio de Janeiro Here he wrote his last, chilling fiction, The Royal Game. The tragic d?uement is triggered when the narrator is unable to send a vital telegram because, unknown to him, the lines are jammed with news of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In May 1933, Zweig's books, along with those of other Jewish writers, were publicly burnt by the Nazis. The opera he had written with Strauss was banned, and earned the elderly composer a terrifying dressing-down from Goebbels. Though Austria was not yet under Nazi rule, Zweig knew it was time to get out.

Moving to Britain, he settled in Bath and took British citizenship. His wife chose to stay in Austria and, after their divorce, Zweig married Charlotte (Lotte) Altmann, a German ?gr?ho had become his secretary.It was during these years of exile that he wrote his only full-length novel, Beware of Pity, which explores the tensions between the rigid code of honour of the pre-war Austrian officer class and the demands of human feeling. From his home, Zweig could see across the border to Berchtesgaden, Hitler's mountain retreat, and at night, trucks full of Hitler Youth would cross into Austria to drum up support. With the French novelist and essayist Romain Rolland, he attempted to set up a union of writers to promote international co-operation. In the climate of the times, the project was doomed, but it was an important precursor of the international PEN Club, of which Zweig became an early member.After the war, he settled in a 17th-century hunting lodge on the outskirts of Salzburg, married Friederike von Winternitz, and began writing the stories that made him an international bestseller.But again, the political situation darkened. Although he was declared unfit for active service, a trip to the eastern front in an administrative capacity convinced Zweig of the futility of war, and he became a pacifist.Ostracised by former friends, he was obliged to leave for Switzerland. Hide-bound, inefficient and riddled with snobbery, it was also tolerant, cosmopolitan, and set the highest value on the arts The First World War tore this comfortable world apart.

She moves away, marries, but can't forget him, and eventually engineers a meeting A brief affair follows, during which she conceives a child When they meet again, he fails to recognise her. Beside the deathbed of their son, she writes him a letter...This haunting tale has been filmed many times, most notably by Max Ophuls in 1948, and most recently by the Chinese director Jinglei Xu (2004), who finds an equivalent for old Vienna in pre-revolutionary Beijing.In his wonderful memoir The World of Yesterday, Zweig looks back at the Austro-Hungarian Empire with mingled affection and exasperation. A shy teenaged girl falls in love with a worldly, successful author who moves in to the flat opposite. Busy with his rare books, his fine paintings, his literary friendships and a stream of glamorous women, he scarcely notices her.