--- product_id: 6309949 title: "The World of Yesterday" price: "₹ 3958" currency: INR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.in/products/6309949-the-world-of-yesterday store_origin: IN region: India --- # The World of Yesterday **Price:** ₹ 3958 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The World of Yesterday - **How much does it cost?** ₹ 3958 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.in](https://www.desertcart.in/products/6309949-the-world-of-yesterday) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description By the author who inspired Wes Anderson’s film, The Grand Budapest Hotel Written as both a recollection of the past and a warning for future generations, The World of Yesterday recalls the golden age of literary Vienna—its seeming permanence, its promise, and its devastating fall. Surrounded by the leading literary lights of the epoch, Stefan Zweig draws a vivid and intimate account of his life and travels through Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and London, touching on the very heart of European culture. His passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the edge of extinction. This new translation by award-winning Anthea Bell captures the spirit of Zweig’s writing in arguably his most revealing work. Review: A window into a lost world - Stefan Zweig was brought to my attention only recently by Wes Anderson's wonderful Grand Budapest Hotel film, whose works the director credited as the inspiration for it. The movie was so successful in recreating the bygone, glamorous era of Central Europe before World War II that I figured the source must be at least as good, so I looked for his works available as ebooks and decided that his memoir, The World of Yesterday, was more likely to provide that look into a lost world than the stories and plays. It was only a few pages into the book that I realized my expectations would be met, and the book would not let go of me until I finished the last of its 440 pages. Covering the period from the authors early youth in Vienna in the 1890s through his life in exile and death by suicide in 1941, Zweig speaks to us from a time and place where a lot of history was being made but he doesn't speak to us as a historian. Instead, we are treated to a first person account of history in the making by someone who was not only extremely bright and perceptive but also a person of wealth and prestige who was very well connected and moved in the most exclusive circles, a socialite without the frivolousness we now associate with the term, who in addition to his native German was also very fluent in English, French, and Italian, the main European languages of his day. We are thus given a close up view of some of the greatest people of the modern era with whom he was acquainted with: poets Hofmannstahl and Rainer Marie Rilke, sculptor Rodin hard at work, composer Richard Strauss, authors Luigi Pirandello and Maxim Gorky, literary critic and Zionism founder Theodore Herzl, Sigmund Freud, and even a young Salvador Dali, among many others. But perhaps the greatest value in this book is that it give us a feel of what it was like to live and be young in the wonderful world of pre World War I Europe, a time of optimism, technological progress (with electricity, the telephone, and the automobile having been recently introduced), rapid economic growth that was lifting all boats, with almost a century of peace behind them and increasing globlalization, where educated people considered themselves citizens of the world and people could travel freely without passports or visas. And then World War I suddenly started, the bubble burst and it was all downhill from there. Though on a smaller scale, it gives a feeling reminiscent of being young in the roaring 1990s, after the fall of communism, during the early days of the Internet and before 9/11 and the dot com crash, and if anything serves as a cautionary tale that progress is not inevitable and nothing we enjoy today can be taken for granted. Two caveats here. First, this is a memoir completed just before the end of Zweig's life, perhaps much of it written after he had lost hope and had decided to kill himself, so the events of the 1930s, especially the rise of Nazism, are given a more detailed, newpaper like kind of treatment, whereas the earlier 1900s are more impressionistic in nature, perhaps embellished a bit, and there are some periods in between that are not covered with the same level of detail. Second, this is an autobiography of his public life. There is no mention of how he met his wife, his children, his father's passing, his second marriage, or even how he was able to make ends meet given his frequent travels and high living. Nonetheless, this is a thoroughly enjoyable, valuable work that like few others make me grateful to the author for having taken the time to write it. Review: A Lucid Odyssey For Our Times - I heard about this book from a podcast and can't recommend it highly enough. The chapter on Eros is worth the price of admission alone. But honestly, every page is worth absorbing. Many lessons for our hyper paranoid, nationalistic times. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #19,133 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #75 in Author Biographies #105 in Historical European Biographies (Books) #236 in European History (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,943 Reviews | ## Images ![The World of Yesterday - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81eo7mB-1LL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A window into a lost world *by D***A on December 29, 2014* Stefan Zweig was brought to my attention only recently by Wes Anderson's wonderful Grand Budapest Hotel film, whose works the director credited as the inspiration for it. The movie was so successful in recreating the bygone, glamorous era of Central Europe before World War II that I figured the source must be at least as good, so I looked for his works available as ebooks and decided that his memoir, The World of Yesterday, was more likely to provide that look into a lost world than the stories and plays. It was only a few pages into the book that I realized my expectations would be met, and the book would not let go of me until I finished the last of its 440 pages. Covering the period from the authors early youth in Vienna in the 1890s through his life in exile and death by suicide in 1941, Zweig speaks to us from a time and place where a lot of history was being made but he doesn't speak to us as a historian. Instead, we are treated to a first person account of history in the making by someone who was not only extremely bright and perceptive but also a person of wealth and prestige who was very well connected and moved in the most exclusive circles, a socialite without the frivolousness we now associate with the term, who in addition to his native German was also very fluent in English, French, and Italian, the main European languages of his day. We are thus given a close up view of some of the greatest people of the modern era with whom he was acquainted with: poets Hofmannstahl and Rainer Marie Rilke, sculptor Rodin hard at work, composer Richard Strauss, authors Luigi Pirandello and Maxim Gorky, literary critic and Zionism founder Theodore Herzl, Sigmund Freud, and even a young Salvador Dali, among many others. But perhaps the greatest value in this book is that it give us a feel of what it was like to live and be young in the wonderful world of pre World War I Europe, a time of optimism, technological progress (with electricity, the telephone, and the automobile having been recently introduced), rapid economic growth that was lifting all boats, with almost a century of peace behind them and increasing globlalization, where educated people considered themselves citizens of the world and people could travel freely without passports or visas. And then World War I suddenly started, the bubble burst and it was all downhill from there. Though on a smaller scale, it gives a feeling reminiscent of being young in the roaring 1990s, after the fall of communism, during the early days of the Internet and before 9/11 and the dot com crash, and if anything serves as a cautionary tale that progress is not inevitable and nothing we enjoy today can be taken for granted. Two caveats here. First, this is a memoir completed just before the end of Zweig's life, perhaps much of it written after he had lost hope and had decided to kill himself, so the events of the 1930s, especially the rise of Nazism, are given a more detailed, newpaper like kind of treatment, whereas the earlier 1900s are more impressionistic in nature, perhaps embellished a bit, and there are some periods in between that are not covered with the same level of detail. Second, this is an autobiography of his public life. There is no mention of how he met his wife, his children, his father's passing, his second marriage, or even how he was able to make ends meet given his frequent travels and high living. Nonetheless, this is a thoroughly enjoyable, valuable work that like few others make me grateful to the author for having taken the time to write it. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Lucid Odyssey For Our Times *by L***M on September 29, 2026* I heard about this book from a podcast and can't recommend it highly enough. The chapter on Eros is worth the price of admission alone. But honestly, every page is worth absorbing. Many lessons for our hyper paranoid, nationalistic times. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Beautiful Memoir of a Beautiful Time, Tinged With Tragedy *by E***D on January 13, 2026* I must admit that I had only heard of Stefan Zwieg, one of the most important writers of his time, from Rod Dreher’s blog, in context of Zwieg’s memoir capturing the grandeur of Europe pre-Great War, the socioeconomic chaos endured by the losers of that conflict, and the lead up to WWII. The book was published in 1942, the year Zweig and his second wife committed suicide in Brazil, by then nationless and stripped of nearly everything. Although these conflicts are foreshadowed throughout the book, it’s about so much more than that. It’s about European civilization at its heights. Any romantic who imagines sitting in Parisian literary salons, listening to opera in Vienna, or meeting great artists in their turn of the century studios will love this book. It’s filled with many slice of life observations about the mores and manners of people living in that time and place. The list of famous writers, poets, musicians and artists Zwieg rubbed elbows with throughout Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France and England is incredible, a who’s who of the time. Ravel, Toscanini, Rodin, Dali, HG Wells, Freud, Thomas Mann, Theodor Herzl, Richard Strauss, Shaw - this list goes on and on - were his peers, friends and acquaintances. This is a lovely book written by a seemingly lovely man devoted to art and culture and most of all, Europe, which one reads with a constant sense of foreboding, given the two calamities which befell the Continent. Barbara Tuchman’s “Proud Tower” is a masterpiece of history if you wish to learn about the socioeconomic conditions which roiled the Belle Epoch. But if one wants a slice of life, an insight into how so many great artists of the time lived and thought, this book is a must-read. ## Frequently Bought Together - The World of Yesterday - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig - Beware of Pity (New York Review Classics) --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.in/products/6309949-the-world-of-yesterday](https://www.desertcart.in/products/6309949-the-world-of-yesterday) --- *Product available on Desertcart India* *Store origin: IN* *Last updated: 2026-10-09*