In his lifetime the prolific Stefan Zweig was one of the most widely read writers in the world, his works having been translated into thirty languages. His star has dimmed somewhat in the Anglo-American realm, but his works are published in Germany in a manner befitting modern classics, and he has millions of readers in German-speaking and South American countries. Zweig is best known for his penetrating stories and his slightly fictionalized biographies of great historical and cultural figures. Lyric poetry does not loom large in his work, but several of his poems continue to appear in anthologies. Of his plays, only his wartime drama Jeremias (published, 1917; performed, 1918; translated as Jeremiah, 1922) and his adaptation of Ben Jonson's Volpone (1926; translated as Ben Jonson's Volpone, 1928) have had international dissemination, possibly because they are the only ones to have been translated into English. Friderike Maria Zweig wrote that her husband was...