Stefan Zweig
Pushkin Press
5 January 2027 (1939)
464
eBook - PDF
Modern Classics
ARC via Edelweiss
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.
Stefan Zweig's only full-length novel has inspired multiple stage adaptations and was the starting point for Wes Anderson’s film The Grand Budapest Hotel. 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.
A century after it was first written, Beware of Pity 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.
Beware of Pity is a book that is part psychological study and part commentary on a rapidly changing world on the cusp of war. I was engaged with the characters and the story right from the opening chapters. As a reader you can see what's going to happen far before any of the characters realise the truth, but that only adds to the drama as they finally discover it for themselves, usually with disastrous results. Although a reasonably long book, the story never dragged and I was always keen to turn the page and keep reading to find out what would happen next. I have never seen any of the adaptations of this book but I can see it working well on stage or on the screen. I recommend it to fans of psychological novels and works from the first half of the twentieth century/historical fiction. I am giving it 4.5 stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
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