Ostend, 1936: the Belgian seaside town is playing host to a coterie of artists, intellectuals and madmen, who find themselves in limbo while Europe gazes into an abyss of fascism and war. Among them is Stefan Zweig, a man in crisis: his German publisher has shunned him, his marriage is collapsing, his house in Austria no longer feels like home. Along with his lover Lotte, he seeks refuge in this paradise of promenades and parasols, where he reunites with his estranged friend Joseph Roth. For a moment, they create a fragile haven; but as Europe begins to crumble around them, they find themselves trapped on an uncanny kind of holiday, watching the world burn.
About the author
Volker Weidermann (b. 1969) is literary editor at Der Spiegel and the award-winning author of several literary histories and critical biographies. In 2009, he won the Kurt Tucholsky Prize for Literary Journalism for Buch der verbrannten Bücher (‘Book of Burned Books’). Summer Before the Dark, his first work to appear in English, was a bestseller in Germany and is being translated into several languages.
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