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Beware of Pity

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Beware of Pity

By: Stefan Zweig
Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
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About this listen

In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young cavalry officer is invited to a dance at the home of a rich landowner.

There - with a small act of attempted charity - he commits a simple faux pas. But from this seemingly insignificant blunder comes a tale of catastrophe arising from kindness and of honour poisoned by self-regard.

Beware of Pity has all the intensity and the formidable sense of torment and of character of the very best of Zweig's work. Definitive translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell.

©1976 Atrium Press, 2011 Anthea Bell (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd Classics Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic Reviews

"Zweig’s fictional masterpiece." ( Guardian)

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Brilliant and Moving

A very powerful book - perhaps the most moving and captivating book I have ever read - Beware of Pity explores a complex moral dilemma. It simultaneously gives a glimpse into the lost world of Austria-Hungary and the torments of unrequited desire.

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Brilliant tangle of class, disability, and sex.

Set in an idealized Hapsburg Austria, characters lack the emotional maturitu/dexterity to manage attraction, disappointment, disparity, or constraint leading to disaster. I read it as an allegory alongside "The World of Yesterday."

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