I am a Stefan Zweig reader. Not that I would expect you to have heard of him. He's been dead - most of my favourite authors are - since 1942, after he and his wife Lotte double-suicided with an overdose of barbiturates in their home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Born 1934 in Vienna, as a result of the Nazi Party's rise in Germany and the establishment of the Ständestaat regime in Austria, he emigrated to England and then, in 1940, moved briefly to New York and then on to Brazil, where he settled. In his final years he declared his love for his adopted country by writing the book "Brazil, Land of the Future".
At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world. Several of his books were adapted into films. My favourite is "Schachnovlle", and I recently found the DVD "A Promise" on ebay, which is an adapation of his book "Journey into the Past" (Widerstand der Wirklichkeit).
It had been advertised by "danderaredvds" in Footscray for five dollars and came in one of those Australia Post bubble envelopes which cost nearly a dollar, on top of which it cost another three dollars in postage, all of which leaves me wondering how this ebay business model works.
Not that I will give it much thought while I watch this hauntingly intense and sensual film, which is a meditation on the effect of time on passion.
