Beware of Pity
Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars
4.21
· 24 ratings · 392 pages · Published: 1939
Hofmiller, an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer stationed at the edge of the empire, is invited to a party at the home of a rich local landowner, a world away from the dreary routine of his barracks. The surroundings are glamorous, wine flows freely, and the exhilarated young Hofmiller asks his host's lovely daughter for a dance, only to discover that sickness has left her painfully crippled. It is a minor blunder, yet one that will go on to destroy his life, as pity and guilt gradually implicate him in a well-meaning but tragically wrongheaded plot to restore the unhappy invalid to health.
"Stefan Zweig was a dark and unorthodox artist; it's good to have him back." —Salman Rushdie
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