Suddenly everyone in the USA is talking about Stefan Zweig’s book about Europe’s lost peace era before 1914. What does that say about the world today?
Everyone knows it, the phenomenon of accumulated coincidences. You hear about an event, a book, a work of art that you haven’t come across for years, and suddenly you hear about it again the next day, and again the next day, and again the next week. Whenever that happens, it feels like fate is performing a little magic trick.
I currently live in New York. Even the most well-read Americans don’t usually have a lot of European literature, so I was genuinely surprised when a sociologist asked me about Stefan Zweig at a party about two months ago. It was a calm and level-headed man; but when he spoke of “The World of Yesterday” he got excited. The book fell into his hands by chance, he exclaimed, and he could hardly believe how contemporary it was, how moving. Have I read it?
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