The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World / George Prochnik 390 p.

Stefan Zweig was once the most popular writer in Europe and most of us have never heard of him.  Born in late 19th-century Vienna to a wealthy Jewish family he was known for both his fiction and nonfiction, most notably biographies of famous people whose lives ended in a variety of tragic ways: Marie Antoinette, Mary, Queen of Scotland, Erasmus.  As the Weimar Republic gave way to the rise of Hitler, he left Vienna forever and began a series of moves seemingly both frantic and aimless: to Paris, England, Manhattan, upstate New York, and Petropolis, Brazil, where he took his life in 1942.

Prochnik has written a strangely compelling portrait of exile, both  Zweig's and that of so many others in the pre-war years, including that of Prochnik's own family members.  He has a quiet, almost gentle style well-suited to his exceptionally erudite subject which nevertheless renders the subject accessible.  He writes that while Zweig has never regained his pre-war celebrity status, he is still well-known throughout Europe and the UK.  He is virtually unknown in the US, however, at least until recently.  I wonder if his American obscurity stems from his own story, that of the exile who came to our shores and was never at home here; so much so that he chose to leave both our country and the wider world.