Beware of Pity

Synopsis

“I can’t take any more of your revolting merciful kindness!”

Who would have thought that the great military hero Captain Hofmiller – that living monument to his own courage – would have anything burdening his soul? But when he reveals his story, it is not one of bravery but tragedy: a simple blunder at a dance from which disaster grows, ruining lives with his weak, foolish pity…

Beware of Pity is Stefan Zweig’s greatest novel, fiercely capturing human emotions in all their subtleties and extremes – while Hofmiller, his unforgettable, naïve creation, misunderstands everything, resulting in his downfall.

Author

Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna to a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. Recognition as a writer came early for Zweig; by the age of forty, he had already won literary fame. In 1934, with Nazism entrenched, Zweig left Austria for England, and became a British citizen in 1940. In 1941 he and his second wife went to Brazil, where they committed suicide. Zweig’s best-known works of fiction are Beware of Pity (1939) and Chess (1942), but his most outstanding accomplishments were his many biographies, which were based on psychological interpretation.