It’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 Austria—searched by the police two years earlier—no longer feels like home. He’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 “the summer before the dark,” 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. Ostend is the true story of two of the twentieth century’s great writers, written with a novelist’s eye for pacing, chronology, and language—a dazzling work of historical nonfiction. (Translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway)

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

Biographies & Memoirs

Weidermann, Volker

Arts & Literature

Pantheon

It'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 home in  Austria has been seized. He's been dreaming of Ostend, the Belgian beach town.  So he journeys there with his new lover, Lotte Altmann, and reunites with his  semi-estranged fellow writer and close friend Joseph Roth. For a moment, they  create a fragile paradise. 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 the summer before the dark,  when a group of found themselves in limbo while Europe teetered on the edge of  fascism and total war.

Dreamscape Media

It'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 home in Austria has been seized. He's been dreaming of Ostend, the Belgian beach town. So he journeys there with his new lover, Lotte Altmann, and reunites with his semi-estranged fellow writer and close friend Joseph Roth. For a moment, they create a fragile paradise. 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 the summer before the dark, when a group of found themselves in limbo while Europe teetered on the edge of fascism and total war.

Summer Before the Dark: Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, Ostend 1936

Literature & Fiction

Pushkin Press

Dreamers

History

Europe

'Vivid, full of sardonic humour, moral nuance and personal drama, this book takes the reader into the heart of the revolutionary crowd, and shows how exhilarating and terrifying it is to be there' Lucy Hughes-Hallett, New Statesman Munich, November 1918: in the final days of the First World War, revolutionaries open the doors of military prisons, occupy official buildings and overthrow the monarchy. At the head of the newly declared Free State of Bavaria is journalist and theatre critic Kurt Eisner, and around him rally luminaries of German cultural history: Thomas Mann, Ernst Toller and Rainer Maria Rilke. Yet the dream cannot last: in February 1919, Eisner is assassinated and the revolution fails. But while it survived, it was the writers, the poets. the playwrights and the intellectuals who led the way, imagining new ways of shaping the world. In his characteristically vivid, sharp prose, Volker Weidermann hones in on a short moment in history, revealing an extraordinary flourishing of revolutionary potential that could have altered the course of the twentieth century.

Träumer - Als die Dichter die Macht übernahmen

Reference

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

btb Verlag

Das Duell: Die Geschichte von Günther Grass und Marcel Reich-Ranicki

Lichtjahre -: Eine kurze Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von 1945 bis heute

History & Criticism

Das Buch der verbrannten Bücher

Essays & Correspondence

Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH

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