Beware Of Pity Av Stefan (Author) Zweig

<b>Stefan Zweig’s tragic novel of guilt, yearning, and the danger of pity, which inspired Wes Anderson’s <i>The Grand Budapest Hotel</i>.<br> <br>“Original and powerful.” —<i>The New York Times</i></b><br><br>The only novel Zweig—one of the most popular authors of the 20th century—completed and published during his lifetime, <i>Beware of Pity </i>is a heartrending tale of unequal affection, unintended consequences, and a world falling to pieces.<br><br>In 1913, young second lieutenant Hofmiller discovers the terrible danger of pity. Stationed at the edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he is invited to a party by a rich local landowner, who also happens to have a pretty daughter. But when Hofmiller asks the girl to dance he unleashes a fatal chain of consequences. He had no idea she was lame, and finds himself in an agony of shamed embarrassment. So begins a series of visits, motivated by pity, which relieves his guilt but gives her a dangerous glimmer of hope.<br><br>Stefan Zweig's only full-length novel has inspired multiple stage adaptations and was the starting point for Wes Anderson’s film <i>The Grand Budapest Hotel</i>. Unfolding in a breathless sweep from Hofmiller’s initial mistake, it displays at full length all the psychological insight and emotional intensity known to readers of Zweig’s bestselling novellas.<br><br>A century after it was first written, <i>Beware of Pity</i> remains a devastating depiction of the betrayal of both honour and love, realised against the background of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the beginnings of the First World War.