'One of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed' - David Hare
'This absolutely extraordinary book is more than just an autobiography... A book that should be read by anyone who is even slightly interested in the creative imagination and the intellectual life, the brute force of history upon individual lives, the possibility of culture and, quite simply, what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942. That should cover a fair number of you' - Nicholas Lezard
'A marvellous recapturing of a Europe that Hitler and his thugs destroyed. Zweig seems to have known everyone, and writes about the great figures of his day with insight, sympathy and, most unusually for a writer, modesty' - John Banville
'One of the great accounts of life in Europe in the first part of the twentieth century' - Sheila Heti, New Yorker
'The book fits the uneasy mood of the moment, the nightmarish ways that history can abruptly overturn even the most secure lives. A powerful statement of the implacable power of circumstance on our lives' - Ron Chernow, New York Times
