Beware of Pity in Bloomington, MN

In 1913 a young second lieutenant discovers the terrible dangers of pity. He had no idea the girl was lame when he asked her to dance-his compensatory afternoon calls relieve his guilt but give her a dangerous glimmer of hope. Stefan Zweig's only novel is a devastatingly unindulgent realization of the torment of the betrayal of both honor and love, realized against the background of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Author Biography: Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars. In 1934 he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short period in New York he settled in Brazil in 1942.